In Living Memory
by 01cheers
Summary: Jyn and Cassian go on a high-stakes mission three and a half years after the events of Rogue One; sequel / longer companion plot to Against the Odds
1. Prologue

…and so, to everyone who graciously asked for a sequel, we're off. Sorry about the long delay; I meant to start posting this one earlier this week, but going back to work after an extended break is never fun; and the extra time helped in ironing out the plot. I have to say though, when these characters decide to hijack a poor fangirl's brain they do not mess around: they have been talking and pulling tricks [and screwing like minks] inside my head all this time ;)

I am well aware of having just dumped 5000 words of undiluted exposition onto unsuspecting readers. What I can promise is that there will be nothing of this kind going forward – they will talk, travel, pull off risky jobs and get into trouble, and all that with additional exposition kept to a bare minimum. In drafting this I switched back and forth between splitting up the stuff in this chapter into subsequent ones, leaving only a bare-bones "intro crawl", and grouping it all here into a more or less chronologically cohesive narrative, and after trying both I figured that it flowed better this way; but you be the ultimate judges of that.

By way of fair warning, most Alliance people I put in the tags will only stick around for a couple of chapters (or rather, Jyn and Cassian will leave them after that point). And there will be a small but determined bunch of OCs taking their place after that.

Last but not least, I will answer the lovely readers who left comments for Against the Odds over the past few days as soon as I wake up. I'd love to do it now but It is 6 am here, and I am too brain dead even to proofread.

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 _Prologue_

 _._

 _Three and a half years after the battle of Scarif_

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The name of Rogue One has become legend, with the Alliance's most famous and almost-invariably victorious elite starfighter unit named in its memory.

The name of Jyn Erso, by contrast, is completely unknown.

x x x

They themselves categorically insisted that their role in the destruction of the Death Star remain a closely guarded secret, adamant that the credit for stealing the plans should go to all who died, not just the two of them who happened to survive. In the case of the heroic pilots who blew up the Death Star, their celebrity status, they figured, was justified by their personal accomplishment in firing the all-important shots – flying prowess, a good eye and a steady hand on the firing controls – that allowed them to accomplish the nearly-impossible. They, by contrast, were simply the ones left alive; or so they chose to see it. A handful of Alliance leaders and officers knew – Mon Mothma and Davits Dravis and Jan Dodonna, and Mon Mothma had to tell Leia Organa who had received the plans and insisted on knowing who had sent them, and on meeting them when it turned out they had lived; and Leia then confided it in her aide-de-camp and also told those three heroic flyboys to take them out for celebratory drinks as the least she could do to make up for their absence at the awards ceremony; and Luke ended up blabbing to his new buddy Wedge; but beyond this bunch, all that got around was rumours and conjecture.

One particular reason Jyn's name was not known is that it no longer applied, as it were. They got married almost immediately upon arrival on Yavin IV, and she took his last name; Erso was still the first of her last names on the official record, but to everyone concerned she was henceforth known as Jyn Andor. Cassian had proposed to her on board the shuttle, notionally in order for them to have a better shot at getting private quarters, since as a Captain he had had to shack up with a roommate… though seeing how nervous he was when asking her, it might be that his motives went beyond pure practicality. It was a very simple ceremony as weddings go; all they did was get their eye scans and her new name entered in a registry, and their only concessions to ceremony were the white dress shirts they wore – she had to borrow one of his – for wedding attire. Rather than elaborate dress or fanciful vows, its real highlights consisted of Mon Mothma officiating, and Leia and K in his spanking new body as witnesses, and the drinks they had with the three pilots afterwards. It was enough.

Come to think of it, Captain Andor was no longer known as such, either. Cassian did not get a medal for the Scarif adventure; instead he got a severe dressing-down from Draven for insubordination and an instant promotion to Major, which, in turn, gave him the coveted right to private quarters. It might be said that his promotion superseded the need for the wedding, if its original _raison d'être_ were to be taken at face value; but they got married anyway, neither of them remotely inclined to question their earlier resolution.

Jyn had held no rank at the start of the mission, so she just got a job.

Technically she was made sergeant, but it was simply the entry-level rank within the communications and coding unit she had chosen to be assigned to. Despite not having a particularly outgoing personality, she fit in quickly and relatively easily with the fellow Rebels by virtue of being no-nonsense, lightning-fast with her data analysis and conclusions, and creative with her code slicing suggestions; and was ultimately regarded as trustworthy. Her relations some of the other _girls_ were, admittedly, initially cooler which probably had something to do with her having taken away a very desirable, if rather unapproachable potential boyfriend; but then even they had to admit how much his manner and outlook had improved with her arrival, what with the sparkle in his eyes and radiant smiles all around and a heretofore-undiscovered capacity for laughter; in the end, in the face of such overwhelming evidence of her good influence, she was forgiven. So now she had a job… and a chance to work and fight for what she believed in, for the good of the galaxy, side by side with the man she loved.

It was enough.

x x x

Now, more than three years onwards, the two of them very often find themselves taking part in the same briefings and working on the same operations, both their roles bridging the murky-but-crucial spaces between Intelligence and military strategy and government; although strictly speaking, they have never been in the same service branch at the same time. The changes in their respective assignments were the result of their choices, but those same options came about as a consequence of intervening events on the military and political arena.

Specifically, it came down to Airen Cracken and Crix Madine.

The two had both held high rank in the Imperial navy before joining Alliance command and assuming their respective General insignia soon after the battle of Yavin; but the outward similarities belied the events that had brought them to this juncture. Madine, a top-notch commander in the Imperial Army, was driven by his conscience to defected to the Alliance when faced with orders too vile to fathom; he was apprehended by the Empire and then rescued from prison by Rebel agent Kyle Katarn, and brought to Alliance HQ by the newly-minted Rogue Squadron from the rendezvous point on his native Corellia. He had plenty of brains and backbone that quickly led to him becoming a General and chief military advisor to Mon Mothma, an appointment whose urgency and value were both greatly increased when General Jan Dodonna went missing following the evacuation off Yavin IV.

The other consequence of Madine's exhaustive inside knowledge of Imperial operations was that he combined these duties with running a sort of crack commando unit to handle the more sensitive and timing-critical undercover assignments. In fact, when General Draven was killed soon after the departure from the Yavin base, it was suggested that Madine take his place in charge of Alliance Intelligence; but he declined, ultimately seeing himself as more of a strategist, or at least a tactician, than a spymaster; so that the Alliance was pressed to recall its unrivalled top operative, Colonel Airen Cracken, from deep within Imperial cover to take his place at the helm of Intelligence as a fellow new General.

Had Cassian known about this plan from the outset, he might have ended up working under Cracken's command; there was certainly plenty to recommend Cracken as an excellent leader, but the top-secret nature of his mission, spanning nearly ten years spent undercover in the Empire and known to no more than three people at any one time, meant that not even Cassian had been privy to his upcoming appointment. When the truth surfaced he was admittedly impressed by Cracken's success; his own two-year stint at Carida was nothing to scoff at, but it paled in comparison with what the other man had pulled off. Not that Cassian had reasons to be bothered by a lack of respect for his own ability; quite the opposite, in fact, as his rumoured role in the Scarif mission had made him into a sort of good luck charm for Alliance Intel. He was not a poster boy on par with the three pilots who had decided the outcome of the Battle of Yavin, and his tasks were not of a flashy kind, but the special status he had suddenly come to enjoy made him rather self-conscious, not to mention putting a cramp into his mission roster, seeing how he was no longer seen as entirely dispensable.

Jyn had no reason to complain about his lighter travel schedule, what with worrying despite herself and missing him every time he went away, and going through acute agony on at least two occasions, watching over him in the med bay and waiting for his life to be pronounced out of immediate danger when he came back really beat up, once with a collapsed lung – K had had to carry him off the shuttle and he looked so ashen that he seemed dead – and once with half a dozen blaster shot burns, in a coma from pain. At least the other few times when he got injured on mission, he had the courtesy to come back conscious. But she knew it would be of little use trying to lecture him on being cautious.

It did not take long for wily Madine to notice the smart Intel officer who seemed ill at ease with the constraints of his role, and he did not waste time in poaching Cassian into his unit, using the lure of letting him run the commando operations side under his own guidance. This meant that Cassian still had missions to run, but the ones he went on now were fewer and of a higher-profile nature. Rather than finding and cultivating assets on the ground or gathering intelligence firsthand, his role was to lead the crack team now placed under his direct command, with the data gathering left to Intel; thus more often than not he would find himself working with Admiral Ackbar's people, especially with Rogue Leader Luke Skywalker and his successor Wedge Antilles, on planning priority raids. Any attempts he may have made to disassociate himself from being entitled to the tribute implied in their squadron's name were mooted by the flyboys repeatedly referring to him as the squadron's godfather; he sighed and scoffed at first but had to live with it.

Cassian's new appointment was enthusiastically supported by Mon Mothma; her interest might have been surprising, but he saw it for what it was, a way of ensuring that she had a trusted source who could discreetly keep tabs on Madine, a new Imperial defector, should his conduct give any reasons to doubt his integrity. Luckily for all involved, the need never arose, but once again, Cassian had to contend with more of a high-profile role alongside both Madine and Mon Mothma than he had originally bargained for.

All this came about right before Airen Cracken stepped in as head of Alliance Intel; and on learning about the scandalous theft of a valued operative, Cracken tried to lure Cassian back, even going as far as tempting him with an immediate promotion to Colonel, to no avail. This did not exactly contribute to a particularly cordial relationship between Cracken and Madine, at least initially; and Madine was quick to ensure that Cassian stayed in his unit by getting him increasingly involved in the strategy side of his brief.

As it happened, it soon earned him the rank Cracken had promised him thanks to his role in orchestrating a high-precision, virtually bloodless planetary coup against the Imperial rule on Sullust a standard year and a half after they left Yavin. Not only did this give the Alliance a much-needed morale boost at a time when the Rebel fleet was jumping around the galaxy looking for a good new base; it gave them as good a provisional base as they could get and a contingent of Sullustan pilots known for their unparalleled tactical maneuvering skills, and most importantly, it gained the Alliance the full services and the diverse but uniformly indispensable output of SoroSuub Corporation, the entity that for all practical purposes constituted Sullustan industry, its starcraft and weapons among the best, and best-known, in the galaxy.

Cassian's role in planning and pulling off the coup made it plain to Madine that his time could be better spent on high-level strategy and tactics rather than skulking in alleyways, even at the helm of a commando unit; and so, to his initial chagrin, by-then-Colonel Andor saw himself taken away from his commando team and brought fully onto the strategy advisory side, and seeing his usual briefing counterparts change from the alternating Rogue Leaders and other military top brass to Alliance command officials – more specifically, the provisional Diplomatic Corps.

More specifically, Leia.

Despite her unconditional trust in Cassian, Jyn might have balked at letting another woman, let alone a young, spirited and very attractive princess, spend protracted time in her husband's company – if anything, more on the account of her resenting them both in case of failed attempts at seduction then on the account of him giving in to said attempts, seeing how he looked to have lost interest in other women after they met. Fortunately for all concerned, it did not take Jun long to see, in the slightly claustrophobic confines of Echo Base that by then had moved to Hoth, that Her Highness only had eyes for a certain roguish smuggler. In a more amusing twist, she soon figured out that Captain Solo had seen Cassian as a similar threat until it soon became unmissably clear that Cassian only had eyes for his wife; or else there would be no telling what these two, with their shared Corellian heritage despite the fact that Cassian grew up on laid-back M'haeli, would have got up to.

As it was, their paths crossed relatively infrequently: after Han, Luke and Chewie had treated them to the celebratory drinks at the Yavin base, they each had missions to go on, and in Han's case also greedy bounty hunters to outrun, that kept them from spending much time in each other's society. Maybe it was a good thing, seeing how Han would bristle at Cassian's blow-by-blow logical approach to military missions and how Cassian would scoff at what he saw as Solo's excessive posturing. But even if they were not firm friends, they had a great deal of respect for each other; and when Leia came back to the fleet obviously heartbroken over Han's carbonite ordeal, Cassian was among the first to offer his services in helping her find and rescue him; and it was only her willpower and sense of duty that made her decline the offer, seeing how the search for Han was more of a personal quest, no matter how desperately important to her, than an Alliance tactical priority.

The tide of galaxy-wide sympathy had started slowly turning in favour for the Alliance at around the time they were established on Hoth; by then news of both the Imperial atrocities and the Alliance's brave depredations had reached even the more remote corners of space, and despite the painful defeat on Hoth, they were determined to push forward to build up the momentum. It was not so much about the large-scale battles, really; most of the struggle against the Empire did not play out on such a grand scale, especially seeing how the Imperial military numbered billions and Alliance forces ran perhaps into hundreds of thousands; though effective ambushes and small victories with a big impact on morale were another matter. But arguably the most important advances were made at negotiating tables instead of battlefields.

And so Colonel Andor's latest job saw him working with Leia, and her aide-de-camp and unofficial spymaster Winter, and occasionally Wedge where Rogue Squadron came into the picture, to crisscross the galaxy meeting with the heads of major industrial conglomerates, sounding out their sympathies and seeking to sway the ones increasingly doubting the Empire's infallibility, whose numbers were by then on the rise, toward co-operating with the Alliance, either directly through supply agreements, or indirectly through delaying or outright sabotaging Imperial orders. Cassian usually took a role that was nominally low-profile, such as a technical advisor or, on a couple of occasions, even a bodyguard; but he would get more involved as the negotiations progressed, and those who may have known him before Scarif would have been amazed at seeing this formerly brusque and brooding character work effortlessly as a consummate charmer.

Their efforts have paid off, landing them several key allies among space transport and fighter ship builders and their respective parts supplies: apart from SoroSuub, by now the list numbers the all-important Corellian Engineering Corporation, starfighter manufacturing giant Incom, its offshoot FreiTek and their suppliers Novadex, Torplex and Fabritech; important shipboard weaponry manufacturers Borstel, Dymek, Arakyd and Taim & Bak; and standalone ranged weapons manufacturers BlasTech, who guaranteed important supply contracts despite the Imperial pressure that came from suspicions regarding their changing allegiance. Rendili StarDrive, major shipbuilders who were still cautious about openly siding with the Alliance, nonetheless committed themselves to lend their support by discreetly sabotaging Imperial orders. The list is not limited to ships and weapons, either; by now they boast the support of both of the galaxy-wide duopoly droid manufacturers, Industrial Automaton and Cybot Galactica; and of Athakam, supplier of vital medical equipment and pharmaceuticals.

But the fight is far from over.

x x x

Jyn's career with the Alliance may not have risen to the exalted heights that Cassian was now inhabiting, but in her defence, he had had something of a head start; so she had no compunctions about taking nearly a year to get to the same point where he was when they met. In fact, it was something of a thrill to have herself referred to as Captain Andor.

She started out as a sergeant in Alliance communications, splitting her duties between code slicing as and when required and data monitoring and analysis the rest of the time; but she did not stay either a sergeant or a comm specialist for long. Her data analysis that helped the orderly evacuation off Yavin earned her a promotion to lieutenant, and soon thereafter she was recruited into Alliance Intel by its new chief Airen Cracken; he found out who she was, or rather whose daughter she was, which alone made him curious, and hearing her in a couple of briefings prompted him to make the offer, complete with a captain's rank.

She was under no delusions about her getting this position largely due to Cracken's failure to get Cassian back into Intel; Cracken could not have them both working in his unit since they were married and Cassian would have won out if Cracken had equal picking rights, but once it was clear that Cassian was sticking with Madine, he was quick to poach her as a valuable asset in her own right. Thus, at the same time when Cassian started his transition from spying to strategy, Jyn went from communications to spying and intel data analysis, albeit largely of the datapad rather than mission variety.

Having been caught by Imperials and spent time in prison on Wobani, and being something of a potential high-value political asset to the Empire, apparently disqualified her from most active mission assignments despite the fact that Jyn herself and fellow Alliance code slicers had done a good job erasing her Imperial records wherever they could find any; and so her early endeavours to get even with Cassian for repeatedly putting her through the ordeal of waiting for him to come back alive were not particularly successful.

After the initial blissful time on Yavin IV, things between them took a turn for the worse soon after the Rebels had had to leave the base, when she discovered that Cassian had somehow got Cracken's ear in giving himself a say in Intel's decisions to send her on missions… or rather, getting himself a veto right. The first she knew of this was when Cracken referred to it as she was forced to confront him when, after nearly two weeks of intense and excited planning of a mission to Bilbringi, she was told that a fellow operative would be going in her place. Considering that Cassian had witnessed all her excitement, and had kept his reaction to only occasional skeptical observations about the mission's high-risk nature, his dastardly handling of this deal with Cracken struck her as the height of hypocrisy bordering on betrayal.

For about five minutes, she actually considered leaving him. By the time she stormed in front of his desk in Madine's offices she had changed her mind about that, but it did not stop her from dragging him away to their private quarters to have a shouting match that led to nothing but three days of gloomy trench warfare. He admitted his involvement but adamantly refused to apologise or even not to interfere going forward. And so it went; for the following three days they barely spoke, he would seethe and she would sulk and they would stake out sleeping rights on the sitting-space couch so the losing party, perversely, ended up alone in the double bed.

There would have been no telling as to how long this would go on had it not been for her finding out, thanks to Cracken who sought to make amends correctly seeing himself as something of an accomplice, about Cassian leaving on another mission – but at about ten minutes' notice. Whatever their recent relations had been like, this had her running breathless through the _Mon Valle_ , the Alliance frigate that was their home at the time, to catch him on the flight deck; and whatever he may have thought of her abrupt change of heart – whatever Jyn herself may have thought of her abruptly crumbling resolve – it did not make the reconciliation any less sweet.

He learned his lesson, but only halfway, it seemed: the second time he blocked her as a mission candidate he told her about it himself, but only after he had made certain she was not going. She learned her lesson too, so instead of flagrant warfare they bickered morosely for about a day and a half; with no mission to go on this time, Cassian had to capitulate in the end, promising her with all the enthusiasm of a condemned death row inmate that he would not interfere in subsequent mission plans where she was concerned.

To Jyn's considerable satisfaction, her next two assignments fully vindicated her insistence by virtue of their unqualified success and her coming back without a single scratch to show for it… which could not be said of the third one, the seemingly straightforward task of breaking into and copying an Imperial data archive at the Sluis Van shipyards, where she came to within a hair's breadth of being imprisoned and within an uncomfortably short distance of being shot dead during her escape, and clawed her way back to her ship with a badly dislocated shoulder and a nasty blaster burn on her thigh, to make it back to the Fleet on a noxious cocktail of painkillers and a stim patch overdose.

Cassian was not angry when he came to see her at the med bay, but seeing his suddenly quiet and kind-of-broken manner, she was not sure which was worse.

The absolute worst came in the following four days when he started avoiding her. She was back from med bay in just over a standard day, and came back to their quarters expecting to find him there after the end of his shift, only to be greeted by a dark and empty room. Her momentary panic subsided when a check of her surroundings showed her that he had not packed up and left as she was beginning to fear, but the fact that he did not show up until three more hours later, stone cold sober, unfailingly polite and distant as Kessel, made it amply clear that things were not back to normal. She spent the following day, still on recuperation leave, alone in their quarters; he chose that particular day to be working obscenely late so as to come back when, by a reasonable calculation of her work shifts, she should be asleep.

After two more days of such treatment, unable to face the prospect of going to bed alone, she got dressed and spent upwards of an hour scouring the dim recesses of the _Mon Valle_ , and eventually saw him in a far corner of the reserve hangar bay, sitting alone and quietly miserable, staring into space.

Whatever resolve she may have had left evaporated at the sight of the pain she was so obviously putting him through; no amount of thrill seeking or even mission expediency was worth it. When she tearfully promised to him that she would not volunteer on any more missions unless he himself suggested it, or at least approved it, he answered, to his considerable credit, that he would not have opposed any of her assignments had he only been able to accompany her, as the worst for him was being beyond the range of reaching her quickly enough to get her out of danger – _most of the time you're not even in the same star system_ , as he correctly put it. She ended up thinking that he was not being at all unreasonable about it, after all, though in a more composed state she might have put up a pretty strong objection to the _I don't want to live if you die out there_ part, starting with _and what do you think it feels like for me_. Then again, no matter how important any residual arguments might have been, they had to wait until after they had celebrated that particular instance of reconciliation; and with the two of them taking a day's leave and surviving on ration bars to save themselves the trouble of leaving their quarters, by the time they had to get out to report to their respective superiors, renewing any kind of argument was about as far from the top of their priorities as it could get.

There was a sort of silver lining to the fact that Jyn now stayed away from most field assignments, in that she found her calling doing in-depth data analysis that would feed into strategic and tactical recommendations for Alliance command, seeing which worlds were swayed by anti-Imperial sentiment, where Imperial forces show themselves vulnerable to attack, and where the industrial players were sufficiently frustrated as to lend a willing ear to Alliance advances – those same strategy recommendations that, more often than not, Cassian was working on. Her new role let her combine the scientific mindset she had inherited from her father and the resourcefulness and gut sense she had developed throughout her peril-filled past to derive pointers that often translated into saved lives.

The immediate benefit was that by virtue of working on different aspects of the same operations, she and Cassian they ended up seeing a good deal more of each other; where in the early months, between his and her respective assignments, they could spend days and even weeks apart, now in addition to the downtime at their quarters, they would meet and talk almost daily for work. They did not stop arguing altogether, but the nature of their arguments changed a great deal. They were a lot more likely to disagree over interpreting the finer points of intel data or the precise tactical implications of a given news item than to tear into each other over concern, no matter how excessive, over the other's well-being.

They found their stride since the early clashes; it may have cost them some time and effort, but in the end they learned to tame their tempers to make the most of the precious time they had together. All they had to do was remind themselves that in a way, every day, every hour, every minute they had since Scarif was a priceless gift they shared.

That they have survived this far is nothing short of a miracle – what with the fraught departure from Yavin, the last-minute evacuation from Hoth where Cassian had to drag her away from her station where she was helping comm officers direct fleeing Rebels away from the attacking Imperial troops; the close calls they both had faced on missions, and the early fiery arguments about going on same missions; the anguish of seeing each other injured, and the grinding routine of living in cramped quarters on board Rebel ships jumping around the galaxy for more than a year post-Yavin, and now for nearly twenty weeks post-Hoth. They have survived all that… no; they have _lived_ through all that, and their lives have been no less fulfilling for these perils and tribulations. There may have been a relative lack of big dramatic gestures and a distinct shortage of much-needed R & R, but it has given them a more acute appreciation of the things they say to each other, the time they have had together, the quiet moments, the light touches, the quick Holonet calls when either of them is away. In a way, they have kept each other alive through all this.

Then again, between all that has happened, no matter how perilous, nothing has come close to their Scarif mission in terms of sheer mortal danger.

Until now, anyway.

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TBC

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You may recall Crix Madine as the young-ish bearded guy who sends Han, and Leia and Luke, as the ground team that goes to Endor in _Return of the Jedi_ ; his backstory that I quote here comes from EU canon.

Airen Cracken is a character in X-Wing books (so his first official mention really comes up post-Endor), but his undercover-agent backstory is my invention.

Winter, Leia's aide-de-camp and childhood friend and part-time spymaster, is a recurring EU character.

I double-checked re when exactly Wedge took over as Rogue Leader, and it was indeed some time between Hoth and Endor, though Luke retained an honorary commission.

Sluis Van and Bilbringi both come up in Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, should you end up wondering about the name-checks.

I hit a mini-glitch in the timing of my plot in that I ended up having to indirectly factor in the pesky and very mediocre offering that is _Shadows of the Empire._ The upside is that it is likely to have conveniently ended a month or so before my plot kicks into gear (which is about three years and ten months post-Yavin and two months pre-Endor, if the official chronology four-year gap is to be followed [somehow I always assumed it was three, but whatev]).

There are apparently two different medical conditions referred to as _collapsed lung_ ; the one I reference is the more acute and dangerous one known properly as _traumatic pneumothorax_.

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Add to the exposition dump my twin transgressions of (1) jumping forward almost four years and (2) sidestepping the plot where they interact with the entire "main trio" plus Lando and Chewie. On the first count, let me say I do admire fellow writers who manage to plot Jyn and Cassian's adventures immediately following the Battle of Yavin, but I lack the imagination to measure up, so much so that this past chapter represents my best shot at imagining their life within the Alliance. As you've seen now, I see it as more of a routine than a series of spectacular capers, with the missions they go on carrying their share of risk but ultimately successful and not rising to the excitement level that would justify a fic, or even a full-blown separate chapter. And since they do not show up in the original films, the only plausible reason I could retrofit while keeping them alive is that most of their work is top-secret in commando-type / strategy advisory / intel roles that do not, however, let them travel together with very rare exceptions. In short, I thought I needed something worthy of sending them on a joint mission that could then be described in considerable detail; you will see what it is in the next chapter, and I hope the order of magnitude will be up to scratch.

As for their casual relationship with the "main trio", I guess my reasons are obvious from this chapter: the way I see it, Luke is too much of a kid flyboy (at first, and then too much of a brooding superhero philosopher) to mesh well with these two cynical romantics, and Han is too different from Cassian for the two of them to become fast friends – unlike the "elder brother" Han-Luke dynamic, or the "fellow scoundrels" Han-Lando dynamic, Cassian is too serious and low-key and Han is too prone to bits of bragging and posturing for them to really hit it off IMO. I see them too much at odds, with Cassian likely to take Han's arguments and destroy them with steely logic, and Han would bristle but have to grudgingly agree in the end, while Cassian would be very impressed by Han's reckless exploits but do his best not to show it openly – all this seems to me to be a great foundation for mutual respect, but not quite for friendship. The people I do see them being both good friends and easy colleagues with are Leia and Wedge (and in principle, Winter and the other Rogue and Wraith Squadron books characters like Corran and Tycho and "the other" Nawara (Ven, that is) and Iella Wessiri), but I cannot promise either of them putting in more than a fleeting cameo appearance.

And finally… I claim research privileges for having spent part of my time away from this plot getting my hands and eyes onto whatever I could see of Diego Luna's films… and the more I saw the more I was blown away by his acting range and by how insanely sexy he is. You may have seen him in Y Tu Mama Tambien and in Dirty Dancing/Havana Nights (and if not, I highly recommend both, and this latter rec is coming from someone who abhors both dancing-centric movies and excessive fluff), but the ones that call to mind Cassian, and Jyn and Cassian together, are the impossibly romantic Solo Dios Sabe from 2006 and the sublime caper gem Criminal from 2004. If you are thinking of watching either one, I am positive they will not disappoint. (if you are also curious to see him in an MA-rated film, check out The Night Buffalo; but its plot is a bit too heavy for my liking).

See you next chapter! – I'll do my best to put it up by Sunday.


	2. Agent Andor, part 1

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"So you're all done with the debrief?"

They are walking from their quarters toward their respective offices at Alliance Command. Since these are less than a hundred meters apart on board the _Home One_ , it practically means a joint commute to work on the days when both of them are at HQ – if _commute_ is the right word for a 10-minute walk. This particular morning they each received summons from their respective superiors to attend briefings – she from Cracken, he from Madine; hers is not unexpected, being the usual time reserved for regular update meetings, but she thought Cassian and Winter, his most recent travelling companion, would still be talking to others about their trip to Thyferra. After all, they only came back yesterday afternoon. Then again, she and Cassian had more important things on their minds since his return than discussing the timing of debriefing sessions.

Cassian flashes her a grin. "It's easy when one of us has a holographic memory." Travelling with Leia may by now have the easy feel of old acquaintance, but Winter, a relative newcomer to these missions as her main job is still within Cracken's domain as semi-independent spymaster – has the rare gift of a perfect memory that, in fact, made her the perfect field agent and a valued intelligence analyst. She holds no official rank within Intel, but it does not make her unofficial status any less respected. "Whatever this is," Cassian goes on, "I suppose it's about something else." By then they are only a couple of hundred meters away from her office. "You expect to be working long today?"

A corner of her mouth twitches up. "Not if I can help it." They've done their best to make up for his absence yesterday, but she sure would not mind another early night… _night_ being, of course, a relative term in more ways than one.

The cheeky grin returns. "Me neither. So I guess I'll see you back at quarters and then we can decide what to do." Neither his suggestive side-eyed glance nor her salacious smirk leave much doubt as to the outcome of that decision.

"Guess so. Wait, that's _my_ briefing room you're going – "

He turns back toward her, then looks down at his datapad, then back up at her. "Delta 9?"

"Yeah, that's our usual – " Her voice trails off and his eyes go momentarily wide and stay fixed on her as the meaning hits them. "Oh _sith_."

x x x

It should not really come as a surprise, after their last-moment discovery, to see a relatively unusual array of attendees at the briefing room. It does not even look like Cracken is chairing it this time, seeing how the assembly looks more like an impromptu session of the newly-constituted Provisional Council than a normal weekly update meeting he runs, starting with Mon Mothma and including Leia, Winter, and, yes, Madine, besides her superior; and no one else. The only people needed to make this a full-on top-level strategy briefing are Ackbar and, perhaps, Wedge, considering how Solo, the other recent addition to the line-up, has been in carbonite the past three months or thereabouts.

"Colonel. Captain. Glad you can join us." She was right; it is not Cracken but Mon Mothma who greets them on behalf of the assembly. "We are also expecting that Admiral Ackbar and Commander Antilles will be joining us at a later point."

Jyn hopes that her mental scowl is not immediately apparent. She was right on this count, too, which does nothing to dispel the proverbial _bad feeling about this_ that has been gnawing at the back of her mind since Cassian discovered the not-really-coincidental briefing room location. Had this been a matter of a normal strategy discussion, there would have been no need for this secrecy that saw them called separately into the same meeting. She wonders who among those present knew the full list of participants.

"Due to the highly sensitive subject matter, we have sent out individual invitations rather than a group notice for this meeting," Mon Mothma continues by way of explanation as they take their seats; at least whoever was supervising the seating arrangements made sure that there were two vacant seats side-by-side around the table. Jyn knows what such invitations mean: the top ten or so people in the Alliance have two messaging accounts, one that is read by their aides and one that is for their eyes only; and the intention was obviously to keep it strictly to those involved. While it would have made no difference in the case of her and Cassian, they ended up being summoned in the same fashion unbeknownst to one another. "And I need not remind any of you present that whatever discussion we have today should not be continued outside this room."

Seeing the nodding heads around the table, she goes on. "The Generals and Admiral Ackbar and Senator Organa and myself have recently met to review our strategic priorities going forward, and the tactics that may bring us closer to achieving them. Our deliberations were greatly informed by Captain Andor's recent analysis, for which I would like to express my thanks."

Jyn is caught unawares by this; she is no stranger to seeing her work appreciated, but usually the praise comes from Cracken, and occasionally Leia and always Cassian when they are on the receiving end of her briefing notes. But she did not expect her latest reports, which are presumably what Mon Mothma is referring to, to have been the subject of an extensive top-level discussion. "Thank you."

"The gratitude is ours, believe me. It was an excellent summary analysis of how our recent advances have been perceived throughout the galaxy and what next likely targets we can concentrate on. Taken together with Colonel Andor's review of the state of affairs within the Alliance military, it has given us a comprehensive sense of where we are and where we should be going."

Surely this august assembly did not summon the two of them here simply to shower praise.

"Our conclusion based on your findings and recommendations is that the moment has come to capitalize on our gains. Our ultimate goal is restoring democracy and reinstating the Republic. To do so, we need a minimal critical mass of worlds supporting the Alliance, located within feasible distances and reasonably safe trade and supply routes from one another, to make sure that the new Republic is not crushed by a concentrated Imperial assault."

"In the recent months, Senator Organa and Winter and Colonel Andor," she shifts her gaze to each of the named participants as she speaks, "have made considerable advances on this front in terms of provisional alliances and supply arrangements, so we believe that we are very close to our minimal target. However, this alone may not be enough to guarantee us a lasting victory; we also need the moral support of at least a significant part of the Core Worlds, and the key Outer Rim sectors, that will safeguard against these worlds continuing to actively support the Empire. It is less important at this stage if this takes the form of open opposition or insidious sabotage, but for either to take root, the respective governments and populations need to see that the Empire is not invincible. We need a highly visible game-changer that will tilt things to our advantage."

"As I mentioned in my report, Senator," Cassian cuts in, "the most significant and effective game-changer would be…"

"Taking Coruscant, I know," Mon Mothma picks up. "But you also admit that we are not yet ready to make it an immediate priority. Apart from the constraint that Captain Andor discusses in her analysis, that of the current lack of likely dissenter worlds in the Deep Core region near Coruscant that can serve as stepping stones to a concentrated attack, there are other constraints that I shall leave it to General Madine to discuss. Coruscant remains our medium-term objective, however, and taking the necessary steps to make its eventual liberation possible is one of the reasons for today's meeting. General?" She tips her head to Madine, who sits up as his keen blue eyes survey the group around the table.

"As the Senator says, we are indeed looking at retaking Coruscant, though not right now. But it remains the long game plan, and in order to be able to take it in one or two years' time from now, we need to start laying the groundwork today. Senator Organa just came back from a trip to Imperial City looking for leads concerning Captain Solo's whereabouts," he goes on.

Jyn steals a glance at Leia and sees her barely-concealed wince. One of the reasons most of Cassian's recent diplomatic trips were taken in Winter's company was because in the past few weeks Leia got lured onto what turned out to be a wild bantha chase after being promised information on where to find Han; in reality it only got her entangled with the conniving reptilian leader of Coruscant's underworld, but on the upside, she managed to escape and the crime lord met a grisly end at Vader's hands.

"And she reports that the Empire and the Emperor personally have instituted significant changes in spacecraft access protocols, security perimeters and the like, since the Senate was disbanded. Things we have next to no information about, and things that it will be crucial for us to know in preparing for a planetary offensive. I'll leave it to General Cracken to speak about it in more detail."

There is no mistaking the drier tone as he says this; it is not the best-kept secret that Cracken and Madine are not exactly bosom buddies, and the old business of stealing Cassian away did little to improve that, but they have worked together quite well since long before Hoth; and anyway, it should be Cracken to hold a grudge against Madine in that affair, not vice versa. Jyn wonders what else is at play, but has to leave that trail of thought hearing Madine continue.

"But there is another target we can concentrate on in the immediate future that is nothing if not high-profile."

Next to her, she sees Cassian raise a skeptical eyebrow. "You mean killing Palpatine."

"Exactly. Now the Colonel and I have been over it several times," he continues, stroking his short beard to conceal a mini-smirk; and Jyn remembers how annoyed Cassian was on those occasions at Madine harping on the subject, despite the fact that their working relationship otherwise is practically excellent. "And we have our differences of opinion, but what cannot be denied is that he is a potent symbol."

"He's a crazy old dictator," Cassian mutters; in a normal military this blatant insubordination would be an invitation to a reprimand from his superior, but Madine lets it slip.

"That too, Cassian, but as the Captain – your wife – points out in her observations, he still carries considerable clout on the smaller worlds and on the few worlds he has recently visited, mostly by virtue of instilling fear rather than inspiring respect; these worlds could sever their Imperial allegiance and even declare themselves in favour of the Alliance if the Emperor were known to be dead."

"Do we even know if he's mortal?" Leia muses quietly from across the table.

Winter, seated next to her, looks up, slender fingers twirling a strand of platinum hair. "Well, technically he's known to be human. His strong command of the Force renders him less vulnerable to most conventional threats, and likely means that he can't be taken down in a firearms assault or by detonating a contained charge. But given a powerful enough explosion, such as a proton torpedo, or targeting him with a direct ion cannon salvo, it is likely that he _will_ die." And as Leia's childhood friend and fellow Alderaanian, Jyn figures, Winter will shed no tears on the occasion.

"I agree, but what are the chances of luring him off Coruscant?" Leia counters. Seeing her drawn face and the set lines around her mouth, Jyn suspects that her grave mood may have something, or rather a lot, to do with her fruitless trip to the capital planet and with the continued uncertainty regarding Han's survival.

"As I mention in my report, Senator," Jyn speaks up, "he has been known to travel to a number of Core worlds in the past year. He has even taken three trips to Inner Rim and Corporate Sector planets where he apparently considered it a strategic priority to maintain Imperial hold on local governments and industry. He sees such travel as an opportunity to demonstrate his total control over and exhaustive knowledge of the state of affairs throughout the galaxy, whether or not it is borne out by popular sentiment at those places."

"So what do we do, incite a revolt?" Cassian asks; the question is not so much addressed to her as to Madine, continuing their long-running argument.

"First, we need to see where it is that he is planning to go to, and when. It may be that the attendant risks of dealing with his powers, or the collateral damage, may be too high on a given occasion to justify an attack, but until we know where it is he plans to go we won't be able to complete that assessment."

"And until we have a secure information channel from Coruscant that will inform us as to his upcoming whereabouts, we cannot even start it," Cracken joins in. "General, may I?" The last part is addressed to Madine, who nods and leans back in his chair.

"As General Madine was saying," Cracken begins, "our immediate challenge is that the intelligence gathering we have in place on Coruscant is woefully inadequate."

 _Do we even have one?_ Jyn bites down on her quip; Cracken would let her get away with the acerbic comment, but the one certain to take offence would be Winter, who has spent many frustrating weeks sifting through contacts and travelling to Coruscant and back under two different cover identities trying to drum up contacts with very little progress to show for it through no fault of her own.

"Such is the all-pervasive nature of the surveillance put in place over the past four years, and previously since the formation of the Empire, that it takes a particularly courageous citizen to wish to risk certain discovery, and their life as a consequence, by relaying information to the Alliance. All important Coruscant public spaces and a significant proportion of private venues are under holocam surveillance that is monitored by Imperial data scanner droids. We have had numerous reports of citizens' homes being bugged using audio devices; these are much cheaper than holocams and easier to install, so for an Empire desperate to eavesdrop and having the droid-powered data processing capacity, the possibilities are practically unlimited. It can be assumed that the majority of Holonet traffic to and from private datapads is also vulnerable to Imperial backdoors. As a result, such courageous citizens as we have been able to find have not managed to stay active for long before being apprehended or killed."

The sullen look Winter is directing at him confirms Jyn's earlier wisdom in holding her tongue, but does nothing to change the truth. "And such courageous citizens have tended to be from civilian ranks rather than the military or the administration," Winter cuts in, "so the data they have had access to have, on the average, been of relatively limited value, to the point that the gain often does not justify the cost in their safety and lives."

"Exactly." Cracken's green eyes flash; had it not been for the streaks of grey beginning to show in his thick red hair, he could almost pass for a thirtysomething, barely a couple of years older than Cassian. "So one of our urgent priorities is recruiting assets within the Imperial government and military, in order to be able to collect higher-value data."

So this must be where Cassian comes in, she figures morosely; given that he had started his Intel career as a recruiter before either Madine or Cracken had come to hold their present positions, they might just want to pull him into it again.

Sure enough, Cracken's next words confirm her guess.

"Knowing your extensive background in this kind of activity, Colonel, I took it upon myself to ask General Madine to lend me your services for this mission. Provided that you agree to take it."

So this is why Madine was glaring at Cracken earlier; objectively he could find no reason to oppose Cracken's plan, but surely he would not have been terribly keen on agreeing to risk his right-hand man's life. And it must be also why they waited until this late stage to tell Cassian himself; plainly put, it is quite likely that they bickered about it until the last minute.

To Cassian's credit, his first reaction upon hearing this is directed at neither Madine nor Cracken, but at her. He turns to her with a quick sideways look; she looks back at him, with a fractionally-raised eyebrow for an answer. _Your call; I may not be happy about it but I won't stand in the way_.

"I will be happy to do my best." He may not sound particularly _happy_ , but he surely sounds ready.

"Thank you. As it happens," Cracken goes on, the relief making him talkative in justifying the _fait accompli_. "Colonel Andor is one of the very few people if not the only one, be it in Alliance Intelligence or in other branches, who would qualify for this assignment, by virtue of the years he spent undercover at the Imperial Academy."

"Other than yourself, General," Cassian shoots back, the smirk doing little to disguise the respect. She has long suspected that Cassian is just the tiniest bit jealous of Cracken's unprecedented ten-year tenure in the Imperial military, but it would never stop him from giving credit where due.

Cracken's response is a broad grin. "Well, I disqualified myself from any nostalgia trips back into Imperial ranks by virtue of being here, but thank you for the call-out. My being recalled to the Alliance was staged as a casualty rather than an open defection," he goes on, "but by the same token, coming back from the Imperial dead to suddenly resurface on Coruscant would raise too many alarms."

"Others who openly defected from high-ranking positions," he adds with a sly glance at Madine, "and even from junior positions, so long as it was known as a defection, are disqualified for obvious reasons. We have a number of promising young candidates coming up," he says with another grin; Jyn knows the reason to be paternal pride, as one of those _promising young candidates_ is his son Pash about to graduate from Carida as a top-of-the-class TIE fighter pilot, "who nonetheless are too junior to be able to assume high-profile positions that will give them sufficient access to sensitive data and important contacts."

"Unlike all of them," he sums up, extending a hand in Cassian's direction, as if introducing a holodrama star to an eager audience, "Colonel Andor has successfully completed Imperial training but was not known to defect; he simply disappeared. And by virtue of being, say, a couple of years older than my son," he goes on with a wink; in reality Cassian is about ten years older, what with him having just turned thirty and Pash being just over twenty, "he can be credible in a mid-rank position in the Imperial hierarchy. I doubt they'd accept him as a Colonel, but perhaps a demotion to Captain, as it were, would not stretch their credibility beyond what is necessary." It is true that Imperial hierarchy is notoriously slow in promoting officers, even at this time of war.

"So long as you don't shave off the moustache," Jyn mutters under her breath. She still remembers the embarrassing moment, a few weeks after they were married, when she flat-out failed to recognise his clean-shaven self from a distance of ten meters.

Cassian turns to her, his grin from Cracken's shameless flattery turning to a look of mock offence. "The fact that you didn't recognize me…" he begins.

"…because you looked to be about seventeen…" she continues for him.

"That's nonsense," he protests, but she can tell he is playing along.

"You're right, it's nonsense. You looked to be about _six_ teen."

"Now I'd like to see _that_ ," Leia mutters from across the table, and Jyn is pleased to see her finally smiling. Must be the pretend bickering, she figures; it must remind her of her banter with Han.

"I am sure the Colonel will be happy to oblige. _After_ he comes back from the mission," Jyn adds, with a mock-triumphant look at Cassian. "But before then," she turns serious as she looks over at Cracken, "I would like to ask you, General, to let me scan through what I can remotely access of Imperial archives so as to be reasonably certain that they have not flagged Cassian's disappearance as suspicious, and that there are no recent records of his identity."

"I will gladly let you do it, Captain, first and foremost for your peace of mind," Cracken assures her, "but just so you know, I have already taken the liberty of doing so. It never hurts to double-check, but over the past couple of days since our plan was first discussed in a restricted group, I tasked a team of slicers to do just that. The conclusion they came away with after analyzing the most recent image of the Carida archives database relayed to me by Pash, and after doing a broad search in Imperial data traffic to see if his name came up either as a long-missing Imperial cadet or as an Alliance operative, was that as far as the Empire is concerned, a human Corellian male named Cassian Andor graduated from Carida eleven years ago and was never heard of since. Which fits in perfectly with his mission here, as him resurfacing alive can only mean…"

"That I was a deep-undercover spy in the Rebellion," Cassian finishes for him.

"Exactly. Or at least that you were involved in _some_ kind of top-secret operation that was run on a strictly need-to-know basis. So all my team has had to do was insert the missing records, as it were, showing that you never left active Imperial service and received your respective promotions from Ensign to Lieutenant and on to Captain, and add the transfer orders calling you to Coruscant. The background records are already in place. I've been waiting for the outcome of this meeting to finalise the transfer order splice."

At least he had the decency to wait for Cassian's decision before doing it, Jyn figures. As if that decision was in much doubt.

"But the transfer orders would presume a vacancy, Sir," Cassian points out.

"And courtesy of your former charges the commando team working for General Madine, we now have just that." She notices a shadow of a wistful smile cross Cassian's face; despite being quite at home, as it were, on the strategy side, he cannot help missing the time when he led that team. "By killing a Captain in His Imperial Majesty's Diplomatic Corps Protection Service less than a standard day ago. The slicer team, in the meantime, has done some work on the candidate roster so that your name is now in the top position as the replacement."

Ah, the advantages of dealing with a huge, faceless bureaucracy, she muses, what with most Imperial reassignment orders being decided by computer rather than based on personal preference.

"Who is he going to work for in there? Ravann?" Winter speaks up. Jyn would have been impressed by the other woman's seemingly offhand knowledge of the staffing of a Coruscant-based unit, but by now she has seen so many instances of Winter's flawless memory so as to take it for a given.

Cracken's answer may not be particularly informative as to the relative merits of Cassian's commanding officer, but his scowl says it all. "Merkon."

"My condolences," Winter shakes her head at Cassian.

"That bad?" he ventures.

"Well, on the plus side, he is, shall we say, a man of limited intelligence. Ravann is more of a human being, but he has a brain that goes beyond following orders, and as such can be a risk should he start wondering about your appointment and should he become curious about your character. With Merkon there is no such danger. Which is, I presume, Generals, the reason that you wanted to kill an officer under his command?"

"There's that," Cracken agrees, "and there's the fact that Merkon's duties, or shall I say the duties of his unit, are better suited to our purposes. Where Ravann is in charge of actual security, as in, ensuring the physical safety of the visiting diplomats and their surroundings, Merkon heads what they call the liaison unit, which is basically a spying operation. They use the pretence of protocol arrangements and the like to shadow their charges, and use every opportunity to eavesdrop on what they report back to their homeworlds."

"How charming," Jyn mutters under her breath.

"On the plus side, I've done this before," Cassian mutters back. "Well, not spying on diplomats, but spying in general. So maybe I'll be feeling right at home," he finishes, his raised eyebrow a sweet if not particularly effective attempt to lift her spirits. The worst thing is, she knows it all makes perfect sense; but it does not make the idea of him going into that Sarlacc pit alone any more appealing.

"Home or not," Cracken cuts in, "you'll be at the right place at the right time, with the best access you can get to the range of information we need, and with relative flexibility as regards the assignment locations and hours." That much is certainly true; the "security proper" unit, to say nothing of most conventional Imperial Army units, would not afford him anywhere near the same degree of freedom of access and movement. "Which is particularly important in view of the range of tasks you will be undertaking on this mission."

"Which, if I understand correctly, are to consist of recruiting a network of potential assets and – " Cassian shoots a sly look at Madine, "finding out what I can about Palpatine's travel diary."

"Correct. There is one more crucial aspect that we need to cover, however," Cracken continues, and Jyn is momentarily nonplussed as to why it looks as if the General were addressing _her_ , or at least them both. "In addition to the two mission priorities you mentioned, our third priority is setting up an automated data relay system to transfer such data to the Alliance. We have been able to receive occasional information from several mid-level administration officials that was useful, but the haphazard nature of such communications limits their usefulness; we never know if we'll manage to get a timely update when we need one."

"The greatest risks, as always, have to do with dealing with physical handover of datacards to get the information offplanet, which frequently involves face-to-face meetings between a number of intermediaries; and as all of you know, the more intermediaries there are, the greater the risk of failure. What we need is to put in place a system that will allow our intelligence sources to submit the information as impersonally as possible, through dead drops and code backdoors in the comm encryption protocols, without the need to expose themselves with risky meetings."

"One of the local assets Winter has recruited, one of the few who have managed so far to avoid discovery, is working at Coruscant Imperial University in a post-graduate researcher capacity specializing in computer science, and the provisional plan is to liaise with her to set up a form of an automated relay that can take the intelligence gathered planetside on Coruscant and retransmit it to us without the need for any being's involvement."

This sounds like a brilliant idea, except for a fairly obvious catch; and before she can bring it up, Cassian does the honours.

"With all due respect, Sir, it would be difficult to explain any meetings I might have with her beyond the first one or two, and assuming I am under near-constant surveillance myself, which is likely…"

"Precisely." Where in blazes is Cracken going with this? "Which is why we believe that you need a wife."

.

TBC

.

I do not think I would be far from the truth in claiming that most people who have heard of Star Wars mythology will have snickered at the anagram of the term _Sith_ ; and I shamelessly played on it above. As Exhibit A in my defence, I bring up Michael Stackpole's preferred swearword _Sithspawn_ from the X-Wing books, so I have a precedent, of sorts. I'd have gone with that one, but it seems rather unpronounceable to me; hence the shorter, more familiar version.

And in _Jyn's_ defence, I present not one but four exhibits, namely, two clean-shaven screencaps from when Diego Luna was Cassian's canon _Rogue_ age of 26, and two more from a year later. I apologise for the cross-link since FFnet won't allow html, but I put them into the comment at the end of the AO3 version of this chapter at archiveofourown*org/works/9317003/chapters/21115490 [you need to replace the asterisks with a dot for the link to work; FFnet can be rather nasty]. He is unbearably handsome but I'd challenge anyone to say he looks a day older than sixteen in any of these ;)


	3. Agent Andor, part 2

.

She can see Cassian's initial confusion; and it is obvious when the reality of what is being said hits him when his face freezes a millisecond later. Jyn herself may have been surprised – by now she was fairly certain that the reason for her being in this briefing was to contribute whatever intel analysis that was relevant, not that, as Cracken said, they had much recent data on Coruscant that were of real value – but she is by no means displeased. Surely he means _her_ ; mission be damned, she would only let another female play Cassian Andor's wife _over her dead body_. And presumably Cassian knows it, for his first explicit, if non-verbal reaction is once again directed at her rather than Cracken.

He turns to her; just enough of a precisely calibrated turn to allow him to look at her sideways, his eyes only a little bit wider than usual and his stare lasting no more than two seconds, but the question is crystal clear. _Did you know about this?_ Then again, he has his answer even before she consciously gives him one, for she herself must look surprised by this. More pleased than shocked, but surprised nonetheless. She shakes her head a tiny fraction. _I had no idea_. She can tell he does not doubt her words; and even though he does not look happy about this, he lets her do the talking.

"I presume you are referring to _me_ , General."

"I was; provided that you agree to this assign-"

"I agree," she interrupts before he has even finished the word. Cassian may have apparently left the decision entirely in her hands, but it won't hurt to cement her position before he can think of an alternative. After all, she'd much rather go with him than let him tackle that vipers' nest on his own, no matter how good he is.

"Makes perfect sense," she continues; she is looking at Cracken but the argument is mostly for Cassian's benefit. "As the Colonel said, it could arouse suspicion if he were to befriend our contact, and could bring them both under a heightened degree of surveillance." Not to mention a risk of marital infidelity, no matter how very remote. "If I were to make her acquaintance instead and use the pretext of social meetings to both pass on whatever time-critical data he may have gathered and work on setting up the automated data transmission you were talking about, it could all be easily masked by various innocent pursuits that I, as a bored housewife, would be trying in my free time."

Out of the corner of her eye she sees Cassian suppress a chuckle. Whatever words he or anyone else might use to describe her, _bored housewife_ would be about the last thing that came to mind. The others around the table mirror his wry amusement with smiles of their own.

"Well, exactly," Cracken answers; and in his case too, the answer is notionally made to her but if she reads the situation correctly, is really directed at Madine. She suspects that she has Cracken to thank, no irony intended, for the _wife_ idea, as an additional, and very valid, argument in convincing Madine to lend him Cassian's services; there is no doubt that he could do plenty on his own, but all things considered, he really needs a partner in this who is no stranger to espionage or computers but will be under less scrutiny.

"If that's settled, then let me introduce to you the most important acquaintance in your future Coruscant social circle," Winter joins in before Madine can say anything, making Jyn think she may have been privy to at least some of the discussion between the two Generals.

She taps her datapad to bring up a holo image hovering over the centre of the table; and when Jyn sees it she is doubly pleased to be coming along with Cassian and taking on the liaison duties, as the woman is nothing short of stunning.

"How old is she?" Jyn asks, just to be saying something rather than gaping in silence.

"Twenty-seven." Two years older than Jyn herself. She uses the momentary distraction to steal a glance at Cassian, to see if he is as impressed with the image as she is; but can detect nothing but benign curiosity in his eyes.

Still, the girl is a knockout. Jyn cannot tell how tall she is from the holo portrait, but it looks safe to assume that she is of a graceful slender build, with a perfectly-shaped face, the cheekbones higher and narrower than her own, dark, nearly-black glossy hair and large gorgeous dark eyes that remind Jyn of Cassian, but are even bigger than his… except that hers look hardened by deep-seated pain and his have been a lot softer ever since Yavin, the sadness she remembers from their first mission giving way to a surprisingly varied range of emotion. In Imperial parlance, seeing how overeager they are to classify and compartmentalize species and even colouring variations within the same species, she would probably be considered "exotic" based on her golden bronze skin colour and striking features, but regardless of such labels, her beauty is undeniable.

"The name's Nairi Panteer," Winter continues, the luminous image still floating above the table.

"She's from Alderaan," Jyn says; given the last name, it is not a question. It also explains her looks; while darker than the average Alderaanian, they are quite typical of northern Alderaan plain dwellers.

"She is," Winter confirms with the tiniest hint of a hard smile. "So she has a particular motive to hate the Empire."

She will also have a particular motive to hate _Jyn_ , she ponders darkly, were she ever to find out what Jyn's father had worked on; Jyn can only hope it will never come to light, regardless of Galen's noble sabotage.

"I can trust her unconditionally," Winter continues, "but the same cannot be said of her partner, so you need to be careful around him if you happen to meet him." She taps the datapad again, and Nairi's radiant image is replaced by a very different kind of beauty.

Where Nairi looks warm and sultry, her partner, a human male who looks to be no more than a couple of years her senior – and no more than a couple of years Cassian's junior – is the classic Imperial poster boy; and the Imperial uniform is only part of it. His good looks are of the chiselled-ice variety, short blond hair and piercing blue eyes and noble features. He is very handsome, for sure, but not Jyn's idea of handsome. Still, she is not altogether displeased when she sees, in her peripheral vision, Cassian eyeing her in a manner very similar to her own a minute ago.

"His name is Davin Jace, and he is from Thyferra, from one of its most prominent families in fact." So perhaps he is Nairi's best shot at a cover-identity partner seeing how Thyferra, the galaxy's virtual-monopoly bacta producer, is still steadfastly loyal to the Empire, putting its famous-family scions beyond suspicion. Then again, with him looking like he does, maybe she just fell for a handsome man.

When Winter continues her words appear to confirm the latter scenario. "They met before she came to work for the Alliance, a year before Alderaan, and have been together ever since, but he has no idea of her real role. He is a lieutenant in the Imperial Navy, and Coruscant is his duty station. Apparently his family used their influence to have him stationed away from the action, so he is part of the planetary defence fleet." Lucky him; although if they succeed in this mission and if the Alliance moves on with its plans, his cushy appointment may result in him seeing a good deal of action eventually.

"According to Nairi he spends one day out of three on planetside leave, sometimes one out of four when they do training exercises, and the rest of his time in orbit, so the two of you should have plenty of time to do your work without him becoming a risk. Seeing how both of you will be seen to have partners in Imperial service and will be on your own for a portion of your free time, perhaps you could enroll in the same hobby workshop or similar class – there are a lot of them run on the University campus – and use it as a pretext to get acquainted, and then use attendance as a reason to go out together afterwards."

"Sounds great." And about as non-suspicious as they can make it. "So who exactly am I supposed to be?"

" _Captain_ Andor's wife, above all." Winter's eyes drift between the two of them. "Seeing how his Imperial records show him to be not merely of Corellian _descent_ but actually of Corellian _birth_ , you are supposedly a fellow Corellian." Ironic, Jyn figures, considering that her real birthplace is Coruscant, where she has not been since she was three.

"But since _Jyn_ is a relatively rare variation on a name whose other versions are _Jan_ , _Jen_ and _Jun_ , and might, in the worst case, trip an alarm somewhere, I thought that it may be better if you become _Jan_ for the next few weeks. I did a quick search of Corellian females by name of Jan Andor and came across a dozen, aged from three to sixty-eight, so one more will not seem at all suspicious."

"Sure." As aliases go, this one will require very minimal adjustment.

"Now let me – " Winter begins, but checks herself seeing the remaining two attendees enter the room. "Admiral. Commander."

"Welcome to you both, and we are very glad you could join us," Mon Mothma greets them; she has been silent for most of the briefing apart from the start, but is nonetheless its notional chair as the most senior official in the Alliance.

"The pleasure is all ours." Admiral Ackbar's gravelly voice does, in fact, sound pleased. "Commander Antilles and I were just talking about how, seeing the strategic importance of this mission – I take it that both Colonel and Captain Andor have accepted it – " he adds, and seeing them nod, continues, "both of us are happy to provide whatever resources and assistance we can to make sure it goes well. But please, don't let us interrupt you." This, with a graceful nod, is directed at Winter.

"No problem whatsoever," she replies easily. "I am almost done, anyway; I only wanted to run through the basics of your living arrangements and the key features of Coruscant's layout as relevant to your mission. The General and I will give you detailed briefing materials that you can then study more thoroughly while you are on your way there; just remember to delete the files before you land." The reminder is hardly necessary, but perhaps there is no such thing as being too cautions among spies.

"First off, we may call the planet by its proper name here, but you'll need to remember to call it _Imperial Center_ once you're there. And the part surrounding the Palace is specifically called Imperial City." So just add Imperial to everything and you can't really go wrong, Jyn muses with a wry smirk.

"Colonel – _Captain_ , that is, Andor's duty station will be within the Diplomatic Corps Protection Service offices located on the lower levels of the Imperial Palace building. The Palace is practically a city in itself, as you know, and houses a number of military and official functions within its premises. It will make it easier to get access to some of the data we need, but on the downside, you know that your every move and every comlink call will be certain to be monitored."

"The only concession we have managed to carve out," she goes on, "is for your living quarters to be away from the Palace, so that Jyn, or rather _Jan_ , has relative freedom of movement. Luckily for us, it is in fact rare for military personnel to be stationed within the Palace perimeter. Most regular personnel and NCOs live in barracks just outside it, but some of the officers are quartered in other nearby parts of the city, as there are so many of them that there is a shortage of living quarters, especially for married officers and families. So we found a location within the military housing quarters register that you can be stationed at, a half an hours' airspeeder ride from the Palace; basically a secure apartment block for officers' use. That way the Colonel – well, _Cassian_ ," she shakes her head with a grin, getting confused with their respective real and cover-story ranks, "will take a military shuttle to the Palace and back, and you can buy or rent an airspeeder to ride around town as you please. But you must assume that the inside of the apartment will be bugged. The General has something in mind that can help you deal with it, but you cannot disable or even temporarily block the surveillance so as not to seem suspicious." Damned if you do, damned if you don't, really, Jyn figures.

"Unfortunately, the military housing complex we have in mind is almost in the opposite direction from the Palace than the University," Winter adds, "but there wasn't much we could do, seeing how the University is surrounded by… unreliable and downright undesirable locations from the Imperial point of view." She makes no attempt to hide a scowl. "Such as the Entertainment District to its immediate north and especially the so-called Alien Protection Zone coming close on the southwest, about a third of the way toward the Palace."

"Alien Protection Zone?"

Winter's scowl deepens. "Ghetto," she offers by way of an explanation. "Being the bigoted idiots that they are, they have pushed most alien species, except a handful of particularly loyal and useful ones, to live in this area that is practically off-limits to human Imperials. Most of it lies further east, but there is one corner of it that comes close to the Imperial Palace, so they have built a wall twenty stories high that blocks the view on that side, and have installed checkpoints so that only Imperial officers can get in from the Palace direction, and Palace visitors do not get an accidental glimpse of it. On the upside, it gets less security surveillance – they let the inhabitants police themselves, as it were – but on the downside, the living conditions there, especially on the lower levels, are downright appalling."

"Can the two of us girls get in there from other directions?" Jyn asks. It sounds as good a location for a safehouse or meeting place as any.

"You could, but it's best not to," Winter replies. "It is, after all, notorious for crime, as many human criminals get the same idea of going under the radar, as it were. You could set up an emergency safehouse there, sure – in fact I'd suggest you set up a few in different locations – but for your main meeting place I'd say it's better to go for something further north, on the Entertainment District side."

Jyn nods her agreement; she is no stranger to holding off armed adversaries, but there is a difference between knowing to defend herself and courting trouble on a critical mission.

"I suppose this is it, really. If there is anything you end up wanting to check before you get there, I'll be happy to help."

"Thank you. Just one last thing, for now. Will you be in touch with Nairi in the next couple of days?"

"Indirectly, but yes. Is there a message you want me to pass along?"

"I wonder if she can pick the hobby class for the two of us to attend, since she is in the best position to decide which location and schedule will work best for her with her job."

"Excellent idea. I'll send her a message right away, and hope she'll answer before you leave. If not, I'll pass it along as soon as I can." Winter shifts her gaze from Jyn to Cracken and the recent arrivals. "I'll leave the floor to you, gentlemen."

"Thank you, Winter." Cracken punctuates his remark with a smile. "For the benefit of the Admiral and the Commander, and to sum up where we stand, we are indeed agreed on the broad objectives and the salient details of the mission that Colonel and Captain Andor will be going on."

"The primary objectives are to make contact with potential assets within the Coruscant administration with a view to setting up a data source network, locate any available data regarding Senator Palpatine's upcoming agenda and travel plans, and set up an automated data transmission relay for use by both the newly recruited assets and any existing assets, that will facilitate their role and give us regular updates. Colonel Andor will be working on the first two objectives and Captain Andor will be working with Winter's local agent on the last one, and will also pass on any intel data the Colonel may come across using the existing communication channel, at least until the relay is in place."

"Since, as Winter correctly noted, we are to assume that your living quarters will be under audio surveillance, and more generally to give you a reliable and unobtrusive means of identifying listening devices, the technical team has put together specially outfitted datapads." He picks up the datapad sitting in front of him and offers it to Jyn. At first glance, it looks completely unremarkable, a mid-range recent model of the ubiquitous MicroData Companion, and a cursory look through its primary menu shows no surprises.

"They will walk you through its features as soon as we are done with this briefing, but to sum up, it has an advanced bug sweeper hidden among its software, so long as you know where to look and what codes to enter. So while it may not, as Winter said, be advisable to disable any of the bugs you may find, at least you will know where they are."

"I take it we each will get one?" Cassian asks.

"Correct, and we'll give you a couple of spares. Winter's agent has one already, but you never know if you need a replacement."

"The other major piece of equipment that you will need to bring in," Cracken goes on, "is the transmitter relay, and here we may have something of an issue. We have assembled it using Imperial parts to the specifications Winter's agent provided us, as her plan is to replace the existing relay that is part of an Imperial installation she has access to. The hardware design will be virtually identical to the existing equipment so as not to raise any suspicions should any Imperial specialist happen to look at it for hardware maintenance or other reasons, but it has a couple of hidden modules, masked as standard components, that will perform high-grade encryption for our purposes. We discussed it via messages over the past few days and we all agree that it will be ultimately easier and far safer in terms of detection risk to replace the entire relay rather than attempt to add our encryption modules to what is already installed. There is also a software component that the two of you will be taking care of in terms of the required code patches, but the hardware is the key piece."

Jyn nods. So far it all makes perfect sense; and she will be the first to agree that few things look more suspicious to a computer technician than strange chips soldered onto a standard-issue board.

"The issue I mentioned is to do with its size. Due to the relatively demanding operating environment and the heavy-duty power and availability requirements for reliably transmitting data past the planetary shield, the relay is not exactly miniature in nature. Add to that the fact that we had to make its dimensions identical to the existing equipment, and what we have is that it is too big to be transported inconspicuously."

"How big is it?" She suddenly has the incongruous vision of a piece of hardware the size of an X-Wing.

"About the size of a repulsorlift pallet." Could be worse. "In fact, almost exactly the size of a standard-issue repulsorlift pallet, which is why we have built it into one as the best disguise."

"That does not seem particularly challenging, Sir," she ventures.

"On a normal and less paranoid world, it absolutely wouldn't," Cracken agrees. "Not so on Coruscant, I'm afraid. Anything by way of personal effects in the possession of arriving passengers gets inspected and scanned by the spaceport security, and there are no exemptions for military personnel or their families. The extra datapad functions are undetectable, but as soon as they scan the pallet they will see that it isn't what it seems."

"What are the options, then?" Cassian prompts him. "Have a smuggler drop it off somewhere, or take it apart and put it back together planetside?"

"These would be the backup solutions in theory," Cracken counters, "but not so feasible in practice. Their paranoia in the past two or three years has led to a severe crackdown on smuggling activity. It has done little to stem the drug trade as there are various ingenious ways to dissolve and reconstitute drugs during and after transportation, but attempting to take apart and reassemble the relay carries an excessively high risk, seeing how we did extensive testing on it here and how sensitive the encryption modules are. And it would require carrying a schematic, which would be a high risk in itself."

Just as Jyn is about to ask Cracken point blank what he has in mind, he relents.

"Our idea, my and General Madine's, is to do with the one exemption to the security scan rule. Or one _feasible_ exemption, seeing how the other applies specifically to Senator Palpatine and Lord Vader. As of now, high-level diplomatic emissaries, which is to say, those in the rank of Ambassador, are not subjected to the personal effects scan and are allowed to bring in a reasonable quantity of belongings without inspection."

Strange how they have not yet revoked that immunity, either. "So you suggest that we engage a friendly ambassador?"

"Exactly. Of course having an ally in that position could in principle have other significant advantages. Assuming that we can manipulate DCPS tasks to have the Colonel assigned to this person when they arrive, it would both give him better access to Imperial data, in terms of meeting schedules and government officials' whereabouts – with any luck, it may extend to Palpatine himself – apart from any other valuable information that may fall into our hands seeing how Ambassadors' guest quarters are located inside the Imperial palace and the Colonel's duties as the ambassador's _de facto_ minder will have him spend a lot of time there, and of course would give us a chance to bring in our custom-made pallet as part of diplomatic cargo. Not to mention that any meetings the ambassador will have with Imperial bureaucrats and government officials will be excellent venues to screen for potential assets."

"The issue is, General," Cassian begins, "that there is an inverse relationship, as it were, between how trustworthy the ambassador will be from our point of view and how loyal he will be considered from theirs."

Cracken's shoulder slump, if only momentarily. "You are absolutely right, of course. The best we can aim for is a compromise solution. Either an ambassador from a relatively unimportant world where loyalty will be less of a concern, or an apparent temporary stand-in for an envoy from an important one who will be credible. Her Highness was proposing the Durosian – " He stops seeing how Jyn has sat up and put a hand on Cassian's arm.

He looks back at her, and a second later, he gets her meaning. She smiles in response to his raised eyebrows, and he shakes his head a fraction at her audacity, but the underlying sentiment is excited surprise rather than skepticism.

Seated next to them at the table, Wedge watches the exchange with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. "Are you two Jedi or what?" he mutters, loud enough for the assembly to hear.

"More like a pair of Twi'leks, if you ask me," Ackbar purrs back; and the two of them all but jump at the coincidental remark. Seeing how by now they have the attention of the entire room, Jyn is compelled to explain.

"Speaking of Twi'leks, we may just have an excellent candidate. I cannot vouch upfront that he will agree to this, but if he does, we may get the best of both worlds. There is someone I know from nearly ten years ago who I once worked for, a Twi'leki businessman who lives offworld. Cassian and I stayed with him after we escaped off Scarif, and he gave us all the necessary help." At least as far as his own tricky situation allowed.

"Nominally he is an Olan by clan allegiance, so the Empire will view him favourably, but in reality he severed relations with his fellow clansmen years ago. Seeing how the majority of Twi'leki clans are opposed to an affiliation with the Empire, to the best of my knowledge there is still no ambassador from Ryloth at the Imperial court." She sees both Leia and Winter nodding from across the table. "So he can present himself as an Olan representative from Ryloth seeking to establish a more significant relationship."

"Provided that he successfully manages to impersonate one of his pro-Imperial relatives," Cracken joins in, but she can tell that he is intrigued. "You are right, it does sound like a good option."

"And seeing how the Empire has long wanted to get its hands on the ryll trade, putting a promise to that effect on the negotiating table can help open quite a few doors," Jyn adds. It strikes her that in her enthusiasm to offer Nawara's services she has overlooked the minor matter of asking Nawara himself, but seeing how there are not exactly a lot of alternatives, it is worth at least checking with him.

"We can pay him a quick visit on Dorvalla on our way to Coruscant, and if he declines, we can always contact the Durosian ambassador that Senator Organa had in mind," she finishes. She purposely uses Leia's official title rather than the old honorific that Cracken called her by, remembering how her very first words to Cassian when they met, way back when Leia, together with Mon Mothma, Draven and Jan Dodonna greeted them upon their arrival on Yavin IV after the Death Star destruction, were to answer his greeting of _Your Highness_ by entreating him, in a light-hearted but insistent manner, not to refer to her as such; so while she alternates between calling them _Colonel_ and _Captain_ in more official settings and _Cassian_ and _Jyn_ in less formal circumstances, she is always _Senator_ , except when they mention her as _Leia_ to each other in private.

She notices Winter sit up and give her a curious quick glance at the mention of Dorvalla; but seeing how the other woman says nothing, Jyn can only assume that she is surprised, as Cassian once was, by what can be seen as a strange choice of world for a Twi'lek to settle on. Either that, or something else about that world may have jolted that holographic memory of hers.

"Very well." By now Cracken sounds convinced. "In either case let us know his decision, so we can splice in the necessary information and build up the communication trail that will lead to scheduling his trip to Coruscant. Knowing Imperial protocol, it should take about four to five standard weeks to arrange that sort of visit, which in turn should give the two of you time to arrive and settle down and make all the preparations for the relay switch. Her Highness and Winter may correct me, but I believe he would be looking at a one to two-week stay on Coruscant as the usual time for this kind of bridge-building visit, with several meetings with mid-range to senior government officials and one or two official functions of the reception or banquet kind. And should he refuse, we'll set about talking to the Durosian."

"The General is right about the format of the visit," Leia confirms. Jyn saw her wince just a tiny bit at the _Her Highness_ , but presumably she never got round to educating Cracken about her preferences… not yet, at any rate; or else she gave up seeing his chronic use of the title. "And proceeding from the assumption that your acquaintance does agree, we are looking at Berchest as your likely stopover point en route to Coruscant." Jyn struggles to remember what she knows of the world; one-time major tourist draw, whose influx of visitors waned somewhat with the advent of the Empire, but still a busy trading outpost.

"The Admiral and I were talking before this briefing how you could not take a private transport directly into Coruscant," Leia continues in the meantime. "And seeing how it would be preferable for your purposes to avoid travel on an Imperial Navy capital ship, we were planning to arrange travel on a commercial transport from a world that has no official Imperial Navy presence. You should be given free passage on an Imperial-affiliated transport once you present your transfer orders. We originally thought of Celanon, Berchest, and Yaga Minor as the stopover worlds that meet the necessary criteria, but if you are going to Dorvalla first, Berchest will be the best option."

"We have located an unmarked SoroSuub light freighter among our stock of impounded ships," Ackbar continues in his usual raspy tone. "It is a widely used model that will let you slip in unnoticed, and you can leave it on Berchest as your return ride at the conclusion of your mission." Provided that they can get a ride to back to Berchest from Coruscant, and provided that they make it off Coruscant in the first place. "It would be ideal if you could bring along K-2SO and ask him to guard the ship. That way, if a return to Berchest is not feasible, he could pick you up at a more convenient location."

That makes a lot more sense; except that… "I was wondering if we could take him with us to Coruscant," Jyn ventures. K has been a great help to them both in the intervening years in their respective strategic analysis tasks, so much so that they have sometimes argued about who will have priority rights to, the way they put it, _babysit_ him on any given day – an expression K himself found mildly amusing, since he would invariably shoot back that he was the one babysitting _them_. But even before she sees Cassian give her a microscopic headshake, she realizes the futility of the idea.

"It would raise too many eyebrows, not to mention alarms," Cracken argues, though by now the explanation is redundant. "K-2SO droids are fairly ubiquitous on Imperial Navy ships and are frequently seen at military installations, but are virtually unheard-of on Coruscant. They tend to prefer CZ or 3PO model variants for the protocol and secretarial functions and SD series heavy-duty military droids for guard duty; the K-2SO model is more versatile than either but they took the function specialization route there. So even if we give you a reason to bring your own K-2SO with you, he will stick out like a sore thumb." Not to mention dear K's tendency to blabber that can spell certain doom on a surveillance-crazy world.

"Agreed." She hopes that her suppressed sigh was not obvious to anyone except Cassian.

"I believe we have covered all the agenda for this briefing," Mon Mothma concludes before Ackbar and Cracken both look up, with Ackbar the first to speak up.

"One last thing, Senator?" Seeing her nod, he in turn nods at Wedge. "Commander Antilles?"

Wedge sits up. "Thank you, Admiral. Just for your information, Admiral Ackbar and General Cracken asked me and your fellow Rogues to participate in this mission in a limited capacity, but one that you need to know about." Wedge's reference is transparent to anyone present at the table, but she has seen her share of wide-eyed looks at having her and Cassian described in such terms, since few are aware of the connection between their history and the creation of Rogue Squadron.

"Once Jyn – _Captain Andor_ – has set up the relay together with the local agent, make sure you send a message using a previously tested communication channel to let us know that the relay is technically operational. We shall then jump an unmarked freighter to the edge of the Coruscant system with a wing of TIE fighters in its cargo hold that I and other Rogues will be flying, and we'll do a fly-by past the orbital comm station to test the data transmission, so that we know when the Alliance can start receiving data in autonomous mode."

"Thank you for the reminder, Commander," Mon Mothma answers him. "We shall all hope that this test will indeed take place and will bring us the good news. We shall leave you to get ready for the trip," she adds, inclining her head toward Jyn and Cassian, "and may the Force be with you."

 _May the Force be with us all, indeed._

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TBC

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This ended up being a monster of a chapter, which I am pairing up with a monster of a note. By way of a heads-up, both the remaining 15 chapters and the respective notes should be shorter, and consequently somewhat quicker to post.

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Panteer is a bona fide Alderaanian last name mentioned in relatively obscure EU canon.

Jace is a prominent Thyferran name that comes up in better-known canon courtesy of the X-Wing books. For anyone who might recall Bror Jace from those, my headcanon has Davin as his older cousin.

Not content with descriptions, I went the movie script route with specific casting references for the OCs I bring in. Oh, to be a director and have these heavenly creatures at my theoretical disposal, given the budget… then again, as a fic writer I can cast them for free ;) – and these casting decisions were both a lot of fun and messed with my brain in a weird-but-good way.

My original reference for Nairi was always, or nearly always, Rosario Dawson. It was only when I started looking for a good pic of hers to put here that I noticed that she and Diego Luna have presented at least two awards together. Both are drop dead gorgeous, and I have to admit that outside of the Rogue One plot, and based on pure looks, Rosario would win over Felicity in my mind as Diego's fictional-plot partner.

My original Davin Jace was Armie Hammer for both looks and family background (as a scion of an important family), but seeing Rosario with her RL long-term boyfriend changed that, so now I see him as both her RL and her "plot" partner. It does not hurt that in another weird coincidence, I named my character Davin _Jace_ before I knew that Rosario's partner's name was _Jason_ Lewis.

I put up the relevant photos into the comment at the end of the AP3 version of this chapter here (replace asterisk with dot):

archiveofourown*org/works/9317003/chapters/21337895

I swear this is the last time I point to AO3; if there was a way to post these links here I would have.

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References to Coruscant locations here and in later chapters either come from EU canon (specifically, _Wedge's Gamble,_ the second of the X-Wing books – the APZ and the Entertainment District are both mentioned there) or are compliant with it as per my best efforts. In my plotting craze I went so far as to put together a map (which is also found at the end of the AO3 version as per the link above); it will mostly be relevant for future chapters, such as Ch 6-7 (the safehouse will be set up then) and especially Ch 13

Berchest is a prominent location in the second book of Zahn's Thrawn trilogy.

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And speaking of _things messing with my brain_ in terms of RL vs _Rogue One_ , am I allowed a total non-sequitur? Because there has been something else messing with my brain in a funny way that I've got to get off my chest.

How weird is it that I am working and/or friends at work with two guys who totally remind me of my current idol? And I swear that my obsession with Cassian has 100% nothing to do with these two or with what I think of them, because the persona I fell for is the character in the film, looking specifically like Diego Luna. I obvs cannot post photos for privacy's sake, but to sum it up, one, the [alas, married] good friend who is almost 15 years older than me, is almost twenty years Diego's senior but really looks like his older version, with the moustache and all; he is a fellow Star Wars fan, has a weakness for precision firearms, was a _carabiniere_ once, and has a last name of _Cassia_ … and I still failed to convince him to go watch _Rogue_ as he only accepts the six Lucas films as canon. The other guy, the one I currently work for, looks _even more_ like Diego in the _Solo Dios Sabe_ clean-shaven incarnation (the guy is almost 41; we are talking another _baby face_ here) to a mind-warping degree (the only big difference, really, is that his eyes lack that magnetic quality). Fortunately for my sanity, he is a bit of a _stronzo_ , to use my beloved adoptive country's terminology; so no personal feelings there whatsoever. I suppose I should be counting my blessings as it is quite a fun loop to be thrown on, but it's a loop nonetheless ;)

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	4. calling in favours

Shorter chapters, yeah right ;) Well, the next one *will* be de facto shorter, and I *will* put it up sooner (it helps that my clean-shaven-Diego lookalike boss is away until next Friday) - or else at this rate I will be posting well into April!

And let me say thank you, once again, to all the readers who follow and comment. Without the option of in-line comments on FFnet, I feel bad about not always replying, but I *am* always grateful.

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"Didn't we just leave this party?"

Her muttered quip is met with confused head-tilts from both her companions, and seeing this, she has to explain. "This is exactly how he met us when we were last here." Almost four years ago. "I forgot that neither of you were conscious to see it back then."

Except that back then, Nawara took his sweet time showing up in a sort of dramatic flourish that made her pretty nervous. And he had not two but four Devaronians accompanying him.

"Well, he doesn't seem hostile," K ventures next to her.

"He isn't," Jyn assures him. She is pretty certain of that; but whether he will be inclined to grant favours is another matter.

Still, there is only one way to find out.

"Come on, boys," she prompts them, getting up from her seat. "Time to turn on the charm."

x x x

"Welcome back."

Nawara's quick affirmative response to their yesterday's message asking for a meeting was reassuring enough, but seeing him face-to-face helps dispel any residual doubts any of them may have. His eyes are bright, and he greets them with a sharp-toothed grin. "It's been a long time."

"Seeing you now, I could swear it was yesterday."

Her words are only part flattery; he may look a fraction of a shade less grey and more pink since she last saw him nearly four years ago, but nothing else in Nawara's appearance betrays advancing age.

"Captain Rook, a pleasure to see you again."

Cassian is too good at undercover work to have shown the slightest hint of confusion at being addressed by a name he has no claim to; he probably ran through their old adventure in his mind as they approached and recalled how exactly Nawara would be addressing him based on their previous meeting; but Jyn, despite remembering that she is still _Liana_ as far as Nawara is concerned, has to consciously erase any trace of surprise from her expression.

"I assure you, the pleasure is mutual." He remembers the formal tone, too; but then, the many weeks he has spent on diplomatic missions have given him plenty of practice.

" _You_ look familiar…" This is addressed to K standing next to them. "Or should I say, your body does." This is accompanied by another grin. "I am pleased to meet your… _person_."

"You know you owe this body to Nawara, K," Jyn reminds him, though K probably remembers it as well as she does.

"I daresay you rather owe it to Liana," Nawara corrects her, "who was very concerned about restoring you to your usual self after you found yourself temporarily… transplanted."

"I am grateful to you both." Nice of K to be playing along with the good manners.

"Shall we?" Nawara gestures to the hangar exit. "Unless there is anything else you want to take from the ship." Besides the compact crate with their personal belongings that K is carrying, that is.

She wonders for a moment if they should bring along the rigged repulsorlift pallet, but figures that it can wait until later. _Should_ wait until later, in fact; Nawara may be friendly but that in itself does not guarantee that he will be eager to jump headlong into a risky plan with them. For that same reason, they are both wearing civilian dress rather than anything suggesting their Alliance affiliation.

"No, we're all set for now." If he noticed the _for now_ , he shows no sign of it. "Let me lock down the ship and we're ready to go."

x x x

It may have been four years or thereabouts, but it does, in fact, seem as if they just left this place. Despite its crazy short days, life on Dorvalla seems to glide along at a glacial pace; the city and its lush mountainous environs look every bit the same as she recalls last seeing them. It is reassuring, and nostalgic, and makes her half wish they could settle there for real one day… if the war ever ended. The twelve-hour days would be a pain to get used to, but she has missed this kind of natural surroundings ever since they had to leave Yavin.

Not surprisingly, the full-length holo that greets them in the foyer at Nawara's quarters is a new one; Jyn figures they probably get changed every few days. Seeing this one brings a smile to her face that has little to do with the need to be nice to their host; the three women in the holo look so happy that the mood is downright infectious, not to mention…

"They look like three sisters," she exclaims, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. She could not even immediately tell which one is Shani and which two are her daughters.

"Don't they," Nawara agrees; she notices that he is grinning, too. "This is from last week when Ayla and her family came visiting from Pantolomin. Talene and her husband live with us now, you know." Jyn cannot quite remember which of the two is the elder daughter; both of them are around Jyn's age in standard years, so must be in their mid-twenties. "They have a house just north of here but we see each other almost daily. They would have joined us tonight but they are taking the children to a lights show just north along the valley."

"Is Shani with them?" Jyn asks. Shani usually keeps a distance from Nawara's dealings, but knowing their by now nearly-ten-year acquaintance, Jyn was half expecting the other woman to stop by to greet them.

"She is offplanet," Nawara explains. "She went to Nar Shaddaa three days ago as she heard there was a new merchant house there selling a particularly fine grade of vine silk. She said she would be back… by now," he says after a brief pause to do the mental calculation, "but when we talked earlier today she said she was still looking through the fabrics. I hope she does not end up needing a bigger ship."

Jyn tries not to grin too broadly; Shani is true to herself as always. "Maybe she could become their trade representative here," she suggests. The local climate is mild enough so that such garments are not entirely impractical.

"So long as she gets her own accountants," Nawara says, and Jyn almost positive she can detect a hint of a grumble amid the purring tones. "I have enough trouble finding them for myself so she'd better not poach any of mine."

"Is your Selonian financial advisor still with you?" Jyn ventures.

"She is, and upon my request she has persuaded half of her family to move here to work for me, but we are still short of people who are good at counting money." Strangely, he does not sound happy saying it; unless Jyn is missing something, needing more beings to count money should be a good sign.

"Business must be going well," she says, if a bit cautiously.

"Oh, it is," Nawara assures her. "It is that the nature of the business has… changed since you two and your companion were here last." By now they are in the spacious sitting area, seated around the table on the dais waiting for the 3PO, who fortunately stays silent, to finish bringing in their dinner. K, who would not be able to make much use of it, asked if he could take a walk around instead; perhaps seeing Jyn's and Cassian's mild concern at the idea of K venturing around entirely on his own, Nawara successfully tempted him into a more sedate pursuit by the offer of an oil bath.

"You see, the… scheme we managed to put in action when you last visited has borne rather unexpected fruit," he starts, his tone a mix of amusement and mild annoyance. "As it happened, when the First Imperial Bank data vault was destroyed, the Empire sent a team of financial data analysts here to look through the backup data storage records and, I suppose, recreate what they could of its recent operations based on those. What they discovered, and what I had not quite realized before, seeing how I had a number of specific transactions as my goal, was that the bank had been resorting to rather… questionable practices on a regular basis."

"But you were still able to funnel away the money?"

"Oh yes, that went through just fine. But the data recovery effort showed that their traders had been engaging in large-scale short-sell transactions involving volatile stocks and unfunded call options and the like. Had been placing risky uncovered bets, that is," Nawara explains for their benefit, seeing how they both are looking confused by the terminology. "At the end of their exercise, the team concluded that the bank was technically insolvent, and that the best option was to close it down."

"Correct me if I am wrong," Cassian ventures, "but at first glance, it does not necessarily seem a bad thing."

"It isn't," Nawara agrees before correcting himself. "Or rather it wouldn't be, if only the local minister of commerce had not talked _me_ into setting up its replacement."

"You?!" Jyn exclaims. She might see Nawara in a lot of roles ranging from brash smuggler to bona fide industrial tycoon, but a banker is not one of them.

"Indeed." His voice and his expression both seem to say _I didn't expect it either_. Then again, she now understands where his knowledge of finance terminology and his need for accountants both come from. "Not that I agreed at once. But it came down to a choice between the Empire setting up another bank, or me and a group of like-minded local businessmen setting up an independent one and running it more or less as we saw fit; and we decided that this way, it could at least be of some use to us and to the general populace. The only problem was that they all thought I was the best qualified among them to run it."

"What about Starfire and your… mining operation?" she prompts, remembering his de-humidifier and climate control equipment import business that served as a front for the mining outfit, itself the basis for the ryll synthesis and smuggling that was the original source of his wealth.

"Both are still in business," Nawara assures her, "though the Independent Dorvalla Bank is now my largest official occupation." The ryll production still being the largest _un_ official one, presumably. "Not only is it profitable, but it has been really growing," he adds, this time with an unmistakable undertone of pride, despite his outward annoyance at his newfound calling as a financier.

"We even extend financing offworld for reputable traders and inter-planetary concerns that are not too close to the Empire." Jyn is pleased with his apparent reluctance to deal with those with close Imperial ties; if anything it bodes well for their mission. "But it also means that I constantly have to look for qualified staff. I do not suppose you happen to know any bankers you could recommend?" His glowing eyes travel between Jyn and Cassian, but both shake their heads ruefully for an answer. The Alliance may have a small team of accountants, but they are not exactly a financial operation… even if they could spare the people.

There is silence for a second, and when Nawara next speaks he has apparently decided to change tack in favour of what, for him, passes for a direct inquiry.

"And I suppose it would be too much to hope for that the two of you decided to take me up on my offer of work".

It is really _them_ who want to offer _him_ work, Jyn figures, but she has to not only match Nawara's circumspect ceremonious tone, but also package the request nicely enough to maximize their chance of success.

"I regret to say that we are still… rather busy with our current employment. But we were wondering if we might take the liberty to ask you for a favour."

On the plus side, he seems neither alarmed nor annoyed. "Based on where things stood the last time you were here, I would say it is I who still owes you a favour, Liana, that you can claim at your convenience".

Wait until you hear what it is, she thinks; you might not be so eager then.

"There is something I must ask you first," she ventures, hoping that he does not take offence at her question. When Nawara inclines his head in silence, she continues, "How confident are you that there is no way someone might eavesdrop on us?"

Nawara does not seem in the least ruffled by the question; coming to think of it, she is probably far from the first of his would-be business partners to ask it. "I have a thorough sweep done twice a day, first thing in the morning and right after the mid-day break. The only listening devices here…" he starts, then motions his hand to the 3PO hovering in the distance, who obediently shuffles over, only for Nawara to reach over and flip the switch at the base of his head, shutting him down. "…are the twin microphones in this one's head. I am quite certain of his loyalty, but it never hurts to take precautions."

"In that case," Jyn begins as she sits up, "I have a confession to make. Well, both of us have," she adds, tipping her head at Cassian. "Up to this day you have known me as Liana Hallik, an independent operator. My real name is Jyn Andor, and for the past four years I have been part of the Rebel Alliance."

Nawara's eyes glow brighter for an instant, but he shows no other outward sign of surprise.

"And my name is not Captain Rook but Colonel Andor," Cassian joins in, "and if Jyn does not take it against me, I was the one who brought her in. But the name is still Cassian."

Her response is a chuckle; Cassian may not have been the one to have brought her in _in person_ – that questionable honour, along with a nasty blow with a spade, fell to Lieutenant Melshi – but the decision had been his and Draven's.

Interestingly, Nawara looks like he could be chuckling, too. For all she can tell, he looks amused to have been tricked by them last time… assuming that he _was_ tricked, of course.

"It is still a pleasure to know you both," he says after the tiniest pause. "I knew something was going on with you two. Besides the obvious, even though you were not yet married."

"It took us two more days to get to that point," Cassian says, and all three of them end up grinning.

"I take it you are not just a pilot, Colonel," Nawara ventures with a sly look at Cassian. "Let me guess. Alliance Intelligence?"

Cassian laughs and shakes his head. " _She_ is," he explains, tipping his head at Jyn. "I _was_ for many years, but not anymore. Strategy and Special Missions."

"Ah." Nawara's eyes narrow for a second; it is hard to say which of them is more amused with this, Cassian over the two of them having convincingly tricked Nawara up to now or Nawara over having been tricked. "Well, as you know, I may not be a vocal supporter of your cause, but I do like your side a lot better than the others," Nawara continues. "So if there is something I can help you with, I am willing to consider it."

This is about as much as they could hope for, but Jyn is also well aware of the unusual, to say the least, nature of their request. "And let me assure you, we do not expect you to take it on unless you are convinced that you are prepared to do so."

Nawara inclines his head. "What do you have in mind?"

"We wanted to ask you if you could be an ambassador," Cassian begins.

"Who would I represent… and where?" Nawara's tone is half caution, half curiosity.

"You would be _seen_ as representing Ryloth." Cassian is careful to put the emphasis on _seen_. "On Coruscant."

The subtle flash in Nawara's eyes tells Jyn that he is intrigued, but not so much as to forget practicality.

"That would be difficult to keep up," he ponders aloud, "I may be able to convince them initially, but after two or three weeks, the chances of me being found out will be significantly higher."

"We would only ask you to stay there for one or two weeks, not more," Jyn assures him. "The nature of our request has more to do with the fact of you travelling there than with the length of your stay."

It does not take long for Nawara to catch on to her meaning. "You want me to… bring something in." As in, smuggle something in; the meaning of his mid-sentence pause is crystal clear.

"Exactly." After all, it was Jyn who once fabricated diplomatic credentials for one of Nawara's ships to help him avoid an Imperial inspection.

"There may be additional benefits to your visit that we may reap while you are there, but bringing in the object we need without an Imperial scan is the most important aspect," Cassian adds. "This kind of provisional contact meeting usually lasts from one to two weeks, and as soon as your official agenda is concluded, we are very much hoping you shall be able to leave before the Empire starts suspecting anything."

"There may be additional benefits for me, too," Nawara purrs, narrowing his eyes. "With any luck I may come across a banker or two who might be ambivalent enough about their political allegiance and good enough at derivatives trading. Not that I am overly hopeful, but I am willing to take my chances. Besides," he adds after a pause, "your request has come at an opportune moment, as it were, in that recent events have given me an excellent fellow clansman as an ambassador candidate who I could impersonate."

"I found out last week that my elder brother Firith," he explains, "has just gone to a backwater desert place called Tatooine on the lure of a promising job. There is a renegade Twi'lek who lives there in the employ of a Hutt gangster, and he promised Firith a lucrative role as another of the Hutt's lieutenants; and the old fool is too greedy not to have accepted." His shoulders move slightly, somewhere between a shrug and a sigh. "Whatever his future fate, for now Firith is conveniently out of sight, and he is prominent enough to make a credible ambassador. And of course I know him well enough to fool the Imperials into believing I am him."

"Sounds perfect," Jyn remarks.

"And since the Empire practically stole my son-in-law's business on Kalarba, forcing him and Talene to move here, I have just the right trustworthy deputy who can keep an eye on affairs in the meantime." So that is why his daughter is based on Dorvalla now; Jyn is sorry for their predicament but cannot help thinking how it must have worked in their favor in more ways than one.

"My only reciprocal request to you," Nawara concludes, "would be to go along with me, as it were, in keeping Shani out of it. I will tell her I am going to the Core Worlds to look for banker candidates, which will be quite close to the truth, and I hope that my ostensible reason will be boring enough to dissuade her from wanting to come along. So if she should happen to come back while you are here, or somehow contact you in the meantime or mention it afterwards, I would be grateful if you could corroborate that story."

"Of course," Jyn jumps in.

"We assure you we have no wish to put her, or anyone else from your family, or you yourself, in danger," Cassian adds.

Nawara's response looks suspiciously like a grin, though he looks to be fighting to suppress it.

"It is not the _danger_ I'm worried about… or rather it's not _the_ danger," he replies cryptically before explaining. "The greatest danger I can see is that if she finds out she will insist on coming along to Coruscant, and knowing her love of grand venues and fancy events and the like, she will want to make it a permanent appointment, as it were." It is Jyn's turn to hide a grin. "Not to mention the money she will be sure to spend on dresses," he finishes under his breath.

"Rest assured, the secret is safe with us," Cassian answers while Jyn is busy snickering. "We're both spies, after all."

x x x

"What do you think?"

She has been busy ogling the place and so is caught unawares by Cassian's question, if only slightly. They landed on Berchest the night before, after leaving the rigged pallet with Nawara, together with one of the tweaked datapads whose secret features they explained to him, producing the required fake papers for him using templates they had brought, creating a fake ship manifest that showed him departing from Ryloth in a month's time, and generally agreeing on the key details on their plan. Now, a six-hour hyperspace jump and a planetside night later, they have finally ventured into Berchest's one-time top tourist attraction, Calius aka the City of Glowing Crystal, the entire settlement sculpted out of a startling orange-red semi-translucent mass created by accumulated sea spray.

"It's… well, it's kind of… sparkly." It _is_ , in fact, and while the holos she checked out in advance prepared her for the bright colour and grand scale of the spectacle, the sparkle was not apparent and is news to her. Still, there is an odd familiar feel about Calius. "For some reason it reminds me of Jedha City." There are several reasons, in fact: the bustle of intermingling species, the absence of large repulsorlift vehicles on narrow city streets, the strange aromas of at least a dozen cuisines. Except for one big difference. "Without the temple, that is." No, except for _two_ big differences. "And with a much lighter Imperial footprint."

"Let's hope they won't blow this one up," Cassian mutters next to her.

She is about to object by saying that, to the best of their knowledge, the weapon capable of blowing it up was destroyed four years ago, but hits enough of an uncomfortable mental snag at the _to the best of their knowledge_ part to give her pause. "You could say that again," she mutters back instead.

x x x

They take their time walking around the city, trying the strange food, trading comments; both of them are aware that even though technically speaking, their trip out of here in just under a week's time will be on a commercial transport, from the moment they board it they must be careful to stick to their cover identities, certainly in public and possibly even in private if a bug sweep of their quarters makes it necessary; and so these days are their last chance on this mission to really be themselves.

They agreed that they would sleep on board their ship, despite booking into a local hotel for their cover story's sake, explore the city for a few hours during the daytime, and spend the evenings studying their respective briefing files. A quick scroll through her brief on the way to Berchest left Jyn with a strange sensation seeping through the dry population statistics and matter-of-fact descriptions of the planet's surface structure; for the first time in 22 years she is about to visit her birthplace, but all she can recall of it are scattered snapshots and faded flashbacks that have more to do with her parents and the place they called home than with the greater city or planet beyond. Understandable considering she was a small child back then, but not quite helpful.

…then again, seeing how she will be impersonating an army wife from a simple background who grew up in the Corellian backwater and so is supposed to be in awe of Coruscant's grandeur and attractions, her lack of clear memories of it might be a blessing in disguise.

x x x

"We'll be in touch as soon as we get a secure channel."

She can tell that Cassian is trying to make his voice sound soothing. It does not take advanced observation skills to tell that K is not happy at the prospect of staying behind on board the freighter while they venture into the Empire's dark heart, even if he too can see the logic. His face may lack the capacity to mimic human expressions, but his mopey voice more than makes up for it.

"And as soon as we're done we'll get in touch with you to agree on our rendezvous spot," Jyn jumps in, hoping that it does not prompt K to say what they all know, that this eventuality has a less than 100% probability attached to it.

K wisely says nothing on this count, but instead takes a final valiant shot at what he must know is a rather hopeless goal. "Are you certain there is no pretext you could use to bring me along?"

All Jyn can do at this is give him a sideways hug, even if her arms only reach to his waist; even Cassian pats his arm as he delivers the verdict. "We would if we could. Believe me, there are probably half a dozen K-2SOs on all of Coruscant." Seeing how K looks poised to jump on this, presumably to ask why that number cannot become _half a dozen and one_ , Cassian adds, seemingly offhand: "Unless you count the ones shipped in to be taken to the smelter recyclers."

This looks to have done the trick; instead of arguing, K just sighs. "Take care, you two."

"And you," Jyn replies. "Hope we still find you in the same body next time we see you."

At least he has a chance of switching bodies, or more broadly, places to store his person, in case of pressing need. She almost wishes the two of them had the same trick up their sleeves as a backup option.

But unlike K, in that case they might no longer be entirely themselves anymore.

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TBC

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Firith Olan is an EU character, and his EU-canon fate on Tatooine ultimately leaves much to be desired. You might recall the strange inhabitants of Jabba's palace including weird spider-like contraptions carrying brains in large glass jars. As the respective story has it, Jabba's scheming Twi'lek majordomo, Bib Fortuna, at one point found himself separated from his body with his brain surviving in just that sort of jar; he ultimately got out of it, as it were, by swapping places with Firith, who (or rather, whose unlucky brain) had to take his place :(

And by way of minor errata corrige, Berchest (and specifically Calius) appears in The Last Command rather than Dark Force Rising; still, same trilogy :)

And by way of a mini-public service announcement for anyone who may want to see more of amazing Donnie Yen (aka Chirrut Imwe) kicking ass, you may wish to take a look at the latest Vin Diesel flick, XXX: the return of Xander Cage. I admit it is a silly film, but it *is* fun and Donnie is great in it.


	5. Coruscant

This is the second and last chapter with a chunk of exposition, but unlike the first one, this time it is kept to a manageable size and covers a week rather than nearly four years.

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It could have been worse.

It is kind of fun, even.

Pretending to be a starry-eyed offworlder who cannot get enough of what Coruscant has to offer is far from the worst way of passing time, even if Coruscant is not exactly her kind of place… very far from it, in fact.

Where Jyn's preference is for nature and tranquility and a very light footprint by sentient beings – the more sentient they are, she thinks, the better they should be at coexisting with nature rather than subjugating or destroying it – Coruscant is a monument to high-tech transformation on a planetary scale. There is no telling by now what the planet may have looked like before hordes of humans and a host of other species decided to make it not just their home but the capital for hundreds, and later thousands, of worlds.

It looks to have been mostly dry land; there is too little surface water left to suggest that there was ever an ocean, though there are likely to have been seas as it must have been humid enough to have provided sufficient water for the inhabitants' needs. Still, there is no sign of whether it was mild and verdant like Lah'mu, which she still thinks of as her real childhood home, or cold and swampy like Wobani, or mostly dry and rocky with well-defined bodies of water like Jedha or Berchest, or wet and rocky like Eadu.

Thousands of years of incessant construction have made its surface into a forest or permacrete and transparisteel, trees replaced by skyscrapers hundreds, even thousands of meters high, vegetation limited to decorative plants on terraces and balconies and indoors, and animal life reduced to scavenger rodents scurrying and burrowing in the permanent gloom amid the foundations, and ugly predatory hawk-bats riding the air currents to hunt granite slugs crawling along the murky bottom of the urban canyons.

The entire planet is organized in tiers, reaching their peak in number and complexity in and around Imperial City; and its social structure strictly adheres to the vertical tiering, with the rich and powerful dwelling among the clouds and the poor dregs pushed into the darkness far below. In a place where there is no limit to physical wealth, light and clean air have become the most precious commodities. Not Jyn's kind of place by a long shot.

Still, devoid of charm as Coruscant may be in her eyes, it is not without some appeal. There is a certain beauty in its constantly shifting pattern of lights that come on long before sunset hour in the lower levels and creep up the towers along the terminator line as the evening advances, becoming a riot of glimmering colour at night. Its skies, too, are an ever-changing tableau of clouds forming and thickening and releasing their pent-up water in massive thunderstorms amid breathtaking lightning displays. Technology may have erased almost all trace of nature here, but the weather has remained largely beyond its control.

x x x

Regardless of what Jyn might think of Coruscant's merits and drawbacks as a place to live, her interest in exploring it in the first week they spent there was mostly pragmatic insofar as it related to their mission. Her rides around town in the newly-bought airspeeder had as their main goal gaining enough familiarity with the layout so as to be able to find her way between the key locations at any time of day, in any weather conditions, without having to think through her routes, and taking advantage of all possible shortcuts.

In the first four or five days since their arrival, she tried and memorized at least four different routes from their apartment to Cassian's office in the east wing of the Imperial Palace, two routes from the apartment to the University, including one winding through the APZ that would allow her to shake off pursuit, and five routes to different points within the vast Entertainment District, from the shortest and simplest to the most convoluted and confusing.

These were only the official trips, as it were. Apart from the obvious fact that the airspeeder's log kept a record of her trips, a discreet bug sweep informed her on the morning following its purchase that Imperials – probably the same guards that kept watch at their apartment block entrances, including the speeder hangar – had added a tracker and a listening device to the vehicle's features, just as she and Cassian had suspected they would. In keeping with their earlier decision not to reveal their awareness of surveillance, they left both devices in place, but Jyn set about looking for alternative conveyances that would be beyond their minders' reach.

And here, Coruscant's vertical hierarchy of social strata became her best ally. All she had to do was take the airspeeder to a large shopping and entertainment complex – most of these were in the Entertainment District, but there were enough of them peppered around the upper-middle floors of skyscrapers in the central part of Imperial City – and instead of riding the turbolift up into the glitzy arcades, take it down as far as it went, and then find another one going even lower, until she would find herself in the permanent dusk of the poorer quarters.

Most of the inhabitants there were unable to afford airspeeders; the better-off among them boasted beat-up second-hand old models, but the majority got around riding swoop bikes, the speeder bikes' crazy souped-up cousins. A swoop bike had better lift thanks to its ion engines and was thus able to ride much higher above ground, much like an airspeeder compared to a landspeeder, not to mention much faster; but it took a steady hand and a sure head for heights to ride one through an over-populated city's vertiginous canyons.

The first time Jyn hired a swoop, paying cash to avoid leaving any kind of trail, she had something of a nerve-racking ride, and had to stop every few blocks to steady her breath. But after a few more rides gave her a solid ten to twelve hours' practice, she gained enough confidence to fearlessly dive headlong for several solid blocks, navigate tight corners, and generally ride in the same manner as the locals. She would still run the bug check every time she rented a new swoop, and when she came back after leaving one unattended, but was pleased to see that this kind of vehicle guaranteed her freedom of travel below the radar, as the sweeps uniformly came up clean.

Once she had found her basic bearings, she was faced with a parallel priority to exploring the city layout; namely, the search for a safehouse. She had to find more than one, both for their own use and for any contacts who might need to lie low. It did not take her long to find several good options – the sizeable stash of credit chips she amassed in the first few days using the withdrawal card linked to an account Winter had set up on one of her previous trips went a long way in improving her chances – but while getting a five-year lease and, on two occasions, buying unoccupied rooms from down-on-their-luck owners under a false identity was a matter of a few hours, selecting the location that was to become her base of operations, and properly equipping it, required more careful thought and planning.

In the end she decided against setting up her main-base safehouse in the APZ; the room she bought there might come in useful as an emergency bolthole for them or for others, but as Winter had said, it was too dodgy an area to visit on a regular basis. Of the two other locations, both on the western edge of the Entertainment District, she ended up picking the purchase rather than the lease, as a space she presumably had permanent and absolute control over. It also helped that it was larger, with two rooms rather than one and an adjacent storeroom, and happened to be the one further south and so relatively closer to the University, and thus presumably more convenient for meetings with Nairi. She had to wait until a week after their arrival for the start of the six-week Chandrila'n cooking class Nairi had picked as their cover meeting venue, but on the plus side, it gave her time to get all these preparations out of the way so they could concentrate on real work.

She spent the remainder of her cash hoard on a relatively new swoop bike that she put into the next-door storeroom as an emergency getaway vehicle, on a minimum of basic furniture – a pair of bunk beds she put in the smaller room that could serve as sleeping quarters, and two desks and chairs for the main room – and perhaps most importantly, on state-of-the-art computer parts that she was careful to buy at three different shops, that she used to put together a custom-made computer that should be powerful enough for their needs. She thought about building a second one, but knowing firsthand how particular slicers usually are about the equipment they use, she decided to wait and give Nairi a free hand in picking the hardware according to her preferences; most likely, she already had a good computer that she could bring over.

Finally, she used a number of false identities, which she had created at her new workstation using template files she had smuggled in, to buy several clean comlinks; on most worlds it would have been an over-the-counter purchase that required few formalities, but on paranoid Coruscant, they had to be registered to a citizen ID. Well, Jyn was willing to oblige; if it was IDs they wanted, it was fake IDs they got.

All that remains now on her side is to meet Nairi, get the relay, and get it working.

x x x

Jyn may have been enjoying her days, but the same can hardly be said of Cassian. Where she comes back to the apartment with plenty of new impressions and, more often than not, a sense of accomplishment, he shows up with the sort of blank face that she remembers well from their flight from Jedha to Eadu, when Draven had insisted that he carry out the orders to kill her father.

Back then she had been in the dark as to the reason for his haunted look, but now it is crystal clear: it is no surprise that he does not take well to the mind-numbing job that comes with his cover identity. At least there is no video surveillance in the apartment, so once he gets back, he is free to make unhappy faces to his heart's content, though more often than not, he just plops down on the semi-circular sitting-area couch with his face in his hands, and she sits next to him until he can deal with the world again.

Usually she fills these few minutes with meaningless chatter about her impressions of Coruscant – the official part of her impressions, that is – and things like gossip about holodrama stars she picks up just for this purpose from the less-serious news channels. They figured early on that the listening device in the apartment meant that it would be suspicious if they just sat there in silence when he came back… even if that was exactly what they would want to do considering that the bug being there in the first place stopped them from talking freely. The initial thorough sweep they did on the apartment showed that the microphone was hidden in the large, low round table set between the wide bay window and the sitting couch, an ideal spot given the apartment layout, as the window's curved transparisteel pane would reflect and amplify sound.

Compared to the relatively cramped safehouse, with its complete absence of natural light, the apartment is the height of refined luxury, though strictly speaking, it is neither luxurious nor particularly spacious, consisting as it does of a single space, most of it taken up by the sitting area, with a kitchenette built into a wall off to one side and an alcove on the other side serving as a bedroom, with a separate narrower window and, thankfully, a comfortable double bed – and a large refresher unit with a decent-sized shower stall; mercifully, the Imperial enthusiasm for surveillance stopped short of bugging the refresher, resulting in them using the shower as an opportunity to talk when they do not feel like going out. It may not be luxurious, but in Coruscant terms, the fact that the apartment is located on a high floor with a good view is a luxury in itself, if a view of a trasparisteel-and-ferrocrete jungle can be good, that is.

And the bed is arguably even better than the one they have on the _Home One_ , though that one is a huge improvement over the improvised contraption they cobbled together from four ammo crates and a pair of stitched-together mattresses Cassian had pinched from Krennic's shuttle when they got married on Yavin. It may have lacked in softness, but seeing how most Alliance personnel had to put up with bunk beds, they considered it something of a prized possession that they hauled on board the _Mon Valle_ when the Alliance left Yavin, and from there onto Hoth, where it was about the only place they were warm and comfortable – and they would have really regretted having to leave it there had it not been that their new quarters after Hoth were on board the _Home One_ , a refitted former civilian transport that had its share of proper bedrooms as a consequence.

The first couple of days, or rather nights that they spent in the apartment, the idea of the microphone inside the sitting-area table put them off any passionate bedtime pursuits; but between the two of them having trouble keeping a distance from each other, and figuring out that the entity listening in and analyzing the feed was certain to be a droid rather than a human or other sentient being, it did not take them long to stop caring; and it was a short step from there to the notion that they stood nothing to lose by putting on positively salacious performances for the minders' benefit, even if, or especially because, they were bound to enjoy it immeasurably more than their almost-certainly-mechanical eavesdropper.

It could have been much worse, indeed.

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TBC

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	6. the liaison

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For anyone who might still be interested in reading on, I do keep on writing.

I should feel mortified about the rude way I disappeared a year ago, but I claim something of a force majeure event in my defence. The day after I posted the previous chapter back then, I got within a hair's breadth of ending up shoved into a dead-end job as collateral damage in a workplace reshuffle that left me way too stressed out to be able to write fanfiction. The worst of it blew over by April, but my work is still too shitty and energy-draining to be conducive to inspired prose.

I am finally posting this chapter, which I've been slooowly putting together over the past year, to show that neither myself nor this fic are dead yet, despite appearances pointing to the contrary. And to show that I really mean it when I say I _never, ever_ leave WIPs lying around. I will do what I can to keep on posting the remaining twelve chapters at a less glacial pace; I have had the detailed plot complete for a year, but need to type them out.

If you are picking this up from where I left off in January last year, here is an "opening crawl" summary of what happened in earlier chapters: three and a half years after the Battle of Yavin, Jyn and Cassian are married and have forged separate careers in the Alliance. Now they have been asked to go on a mission to Coruscant, posing as an Imperial officer and his wife, to get intel of Palpatine's travel plans and set up an automated comm relay to the Rebel fleet. En route they looked up Jyn's ex-boss Nawara, who promised to help impersonating an ambassador from Ryloth. Here Jyn is about to meet her Coruscant liaison, Nairi, Winter's local asset.

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"Doesn't look like much, I know."

For a moment, Jyn is perplexed. Not by the remark, or by the reasoning behind it: Nairi must have followed Jyn's gaze, and picked up on her skeptical scowl. They have reached the middle of a short open-air walkway connecting two towers on the west side of the campus, the gleaming transparisteel walls and spires around them beginning to glow golden from a mix of approaching sunset and lights coming on inside in the waning afternoon.

An impressive view, but a rather soulless one.

What really makes Jyn frown, though, is the abrupt change in her companion's expression.

Sure enough, Nairi is the same statuesque beauty, looking very much like the holo Jyn saw in the briefing on the Home One, except that her flowing long hair has been cut to a no-nonsense bob just a couple of inches away from being severe. And yet she almost seems a different person from the carefree, mischievous girl Jyn met an hour ago in the cooking class, where the two of them were so deep into a discussion of the best ways of tweaking swoop bike engines that they made an atrociously charred mess of what were meant to be the famous Chandri-La'n fluffy pastries. The class instructor chef was too busy answering questions from the other aspiring cooks to pay enough attention to the chatty pair at the far end of the room, who were too distracted to either set the correct temperature or realise the damage being done until they noticed the smoke filling the oven – and all they could do then was snicker at their culinary skills.

Now, Nairi's look is of almost-stern determination, at odds with the soft and sensuous features. Hers is a face that looks to be made for smiling, and yet her present mood appears to be somewhere between thoughtful and sullen, reminding Jyn of Cassian when they just met; she remembers that set, sort-of-haunted expression, an outward sign of insidious pain simmering just below the surface. She counts wiping the permanent gloom off Cassian's face and lifting the lurking anguish from his eyes – for most of the time – as one of her greatest achievements; and the best thing is, she has known and watched him long enough, and has heard him give her the credit for it enough times, to know that the change is real. With Nairi, Jyn finds herself wondering if the other girl's bubbly cooking-class persona was no more than an act in front of other strangers; or if Jyn has somehow provoked this sudden shift. Whatever the reason, it could mean that Nairi will be a difficult partner to work with.

"It's not that," Jyn argues, unsure if a critical verdict from a visitor could offend a recent graduate. "It just doesn't look much like a university." The younger-looking crowd is the only sign that they are in the middle of a vast campus. Had Jyn seen it from above, unable to gauge the average age of the passers-by, she might have taken it for the business district; the same endless panes of sleek transparisteel, the same rigid grid of towering blocks.

"Exactly. It looks like something the bankers' clan would have commissioned." So maybe Jyn has been over-thinking things, imagining herself to be the target of disdain that is really aimed at hostile authorities. Sure enough, for a native of the vanished Alderaan, with its gloriously untamed nature and its architects' contempt for right angles and blocky shapes, this must stand for pretty bad taste, school loyalties notwithstanding.

"It wasn't always like this, you know," Nairi continues. "I mean it was already like this when I enrolled, but I hacked into the holo archives out of curiosity. Back under the Republic, the buildings weren't nearly as tall, and the campus was more spread out, it went at least three blocks further north into what is now the Entertainment District. And all the roofs were flat so they had lawns and gardens and open squares, and lots of walkways between them. It looked like a big park on the surface."

"And then they got greedy," Jyn ventures. Sure enough, the taller the buildings, the more tuition-paying students can fit into them.

Nairi's response is an eloquent grimace. "Yup. It started under the Republic already, but at least they tried to keep the layout more or less the same, just built it all up a dozen stories. Then as soon as the Empire took over, the new board of trustees lobbied for a planning permission that allowed them to lease the area on the northern side to be redeveloped into tapcafes and gambling parlours and stuff, and used part of the proceeds to put these towers on top of all the flat rooftops, to make up for university space given up under the lease."

"I'm not surprised, but it's still a shame they only cared about lining their pockets. Just like the bankers, really."

"There was another reason. If they just wanted more money, they could have simply raised the tuition fees. There'd still be thousands of applicants. But this way they also made sure there'd be no place left for student protests. There's nothing in the official university archives, of course, but they say that in the first year or so of the Empire there were huge crowds that held regular rallies here, and a lot of students were expelled and their leaders were jailed. And the trustees must've figured it was too much of a risk to have a hotbed of dissent twenty blocks from the Imperial palace, so they found a way to squeeze out the protesters and enrich themselves in one go. Notice how the only open spaces left are these narrow terraces with rows of trees and really thick hedges? It's all part of the grand design to stop the students from gathering more than ten at a time."

By now Jyn herself is scowling; no wonder her companion's lighthearted mood did not outlast the class.

Still, University politics and ruined pastries notwithstanding, the class itself was a good idea; it made their meeting look accidental, and made it seem natural that their apparent shared interest in cooking – an eccentric pursuit when most cooking is done by droids anyway – would lead them to strike up a friendship in the process. She purposely took the airspeeder all the way to the University, signaling her route to whatever Imperial minder might be keeping an eye on her, and inquired loudly about the Chandri-La'n cooking course at the building reception. Her future trips to the same address will thus have an innocuous explanation, and pretending to go out for after-class drinks or shopping trips with her new friend will be the best cover for sneaking into a lower-level garage to take an un-monitored rental swoop to the safehouse… which is precisely what they are about to do.

She can only hope that anyone who may be watching them does not decide to follow them too far.

xxx

" _Weather science?_ " Jyn bites down on the _really_ , but still immediately regrets her blurted-out question that, even to her own ears, came out as more incredulous than plain curious. Truth be told, since Winter had mentioned that her liaison was a graduate researcher specializing in programming, Jyn was expecting Nairi's official field of study to be something closer to dual-purpose if not outright military, like spacecraft propulsion or navigation, rather than meteorology.

On the plus side, Nairi does not look offended, though when she answers, her voice carries a sarcastic edge. "You got a problem with it?"

"No." Jyn grins at her from the doorway connecting the two rooms of the safehouse; she has just finished sweeping the main room for bugs, after setting the outside sensors to alert them to any snooping Imperials with a silent alarm, and figured that a bit of small talk was not a big risk as Nairi was almost done with her share of the sweep in the other room. "Just curious."

"It didn't exactly start out this way," Nairi mutters, as she switches off the detector, "but it's the best cover for what I'm _really_ doing." She flashes Jyn a mock-challenging look. "Believe it or not."

"How does it work?" Hopefully, there will be no mistaking her question for anything other than honest curiosity this time.

"Well, you've seen the local weather."

"Sure did." She has wondered, too, who and for whatever reason decided to set up the seat of galactic power on a planet subject to frequent and violent thunderstorms accompanied by gale-force wind gusts.

"Like, a thunderstorm every few minutes."

"Well, more like every few hours, but I know what you mean."

"Every few hours _at any given spot_ ," Nairi corrects her. "When the statistics are averaged out across seasons for the entire planet, turns out there's a thunderstorm beginning somewhere on the planet every three minutes. At any given time there'll be between forty and fifty."

" _Holy Sith_." If Jyn were good at giving surprised whistles, she sure would have.

"Some lightning strikes are so powerful as to knock out spaceport comm arrays that transmit landing directions. And with the traffic Coruscant gets, it could mean dozens of crashes and collisions daily."

"You bet." Suddenly, the seemingly-inconsequential meteorologist's job does not look remotely lightweight.

"Which is why planetary traffic control needs very precise forecasts showing the time, location and strength of these storms so as to redirect incoming craft between the main spaceports, and schedule the take-off windows for outgoing ships." Nairi tips her head at the wide screen sitting beside a bulky metal box with slatted sides serving as the housing for Jyn's cobbled-together computer. "Which is where programming comes in," she finishes as she sits down on a durasteel crate in front of it. "Mind if I take a look?"

"Go ahead."

Nairi flips the power switch, and Jyn steps over to the makeshift desk and types in the passcode, prompting the start-up sequence to scroll down before Nairi interrupts it with a shortcut command bringing up the system specs screen.

"You picked this?" Nairi asks after a few seconds' study.

Jyn cannot say from Nairi's flat tone if what she has seen has impressed or disappointed her. In the bigger scheme of things it should be no big deal; but Jyn counts herself a good enough, if part-time, slicer to be offended if her competence is found lacking.

"Yeah." For now, she keeps it non-committal.

"I'm guessing you put it together yourself. They don't sell this kind of configuration to casual users."

OK, no doubt of her slicer credentials, then.

"I figured as much, so I got the components separately from wholesalers and at a couple of shops that sell refurbished industrial machines. So long as they got paid in cash they didn't ask why I needed the stuff."

Nairi nods instead of an answer, still focused on the readout. "We may need more memory to run the simulation," she mutters, "but that can be easily fixed."

Truth be told, Jyn half suspected it herself, but did not want to alarm the rather nervous trader who sold her the top-of-the-line, high-endurance memory modules with too tall an order.

"I'll get extra modules, sure. Tell me what else you think we need, I'll do the shopping. I'm free in the daytime, and I have an expense account courtesy of the Alliance."

"You mean courtesy of Targeter?" The way she says it, it is not really a question.

"Well, obviously." She is just a bit surprised at hearing Nairi refer to Winter's espionage alias; Jyn assumed that the two women knew each other from Alderaan before either one joined the Alliance. She is tempted to ask, but does not want to appear too nosy. Then again, maybe Nairi is used to calling Winter by her codename as a matter of secrecy-dictated habit.

"So there's a climate model based on satellite data that you work on," Jyn prompts once Nairi has completed the check. She is no expert on these things, but has a distant memory of her father patiently trying to explain to her five-year-old self how weather prediction worked as they sat out a glum rainy spell in their home on Lah'mu.

"Yep, that's it. There are about two hundred satellites in planet-stationary orbit that transmit data to six main orbital stations, which then retransmit the data to our facility on the ground. The data, as you say, is fed into the database and used to both adjust the long-term model and produce short-term forecasts. Which are then simultaneously sent over to traffic control and up to the stations and from there to the satellites, as the early-warning system for incoming ships. So that by the time they request the approach vector, they already know which ports are off-limits at that time."

"And you run the model?"

"It's part of what I do. The best part is, thanks to my employers' greed I also do the lower-level technical stuff, like monitoring the data transmission quality between the stations and the ground unit, and overseeing the maintenance of those stations. The maintenance itself and the basic diagnostics are done by droids, but I still visit them once a standard month to run the extended diagnostics and stress tests, and I've convinced my supervisor that it is best to do staggered checks one station at a time. It works out as a trip every five days."

"Why do you really need to go up there?" The way Nairi talks about it, she has an ulterior motive. Jyn knows the likely reason, but it won't hurt to know the details.

"Going to the stations is the safest way to send messages to the Alliance." Just like she thought. "It's easy to tweak the software at the orbital stations to send out data dumps when queried by a spacecraft passing outside the planetary shield and transmitting the correct passcode, but for now I have to plant the data there directly. I can't send intel information over the air using the existing relay, from here to the stations, without access to a sophisticated scrambler. Remember, these same messages are sent to traffic control that runs a security scan on all incoming transmissions. Until we install the duplicate relay you've brought, there's no way to both encrypt the messages and break them up into small enough fragments to make them undetectable. But once we make the switch, from what Targeter told me, it can pick up espionage data from dead drops via secure links and embed it as scrambled bits into the message filler lines in a way that's guaranteed to bypass all checks."

"Right." It makes sense, but also makes Jyn realise that she has awkward news to break. "Something I should tell you, though, is that the relay isn't here yet." Seeing the apprehension in her companion's face, she goes on: "It will be here in about three weeks. It was too risky for us to bring it, the Imps at the spaceport might want to inspect it if we had it with us. I have a… trusted associate bringing it in using diplomatic immunity."

Jyn's momentary hesitation as she sought for the best way of describing Nawara was not lost on Nairi, who apparently interpreted it as a reflection of doubt. "Just how well do you trust this associate?"

"Enough to know he won't let us down. We ran the plan past Targeter before we left and she was on board with it," she adds for greater reassurance. "I've known this guy for years, and he really helped the two of us out when we were on the run from the Empire right after we escaped from Sca-"

She trails off the instant she realises that her big mouth has brought her too close to risky territory, what with the whole Death Star matter being a painful subject for a native Alderaanian and with her family history being tied into it way too tight for comfort, and hopes to steer the conversation clear of their Scarif exploits… but the other girl's stunned expression tells her that it is too late.

"You mean – it was – you guys are _real_ , are you? I always thought the story about the two spies who stole the Death Star readouts on Scarif was kind of an Alliance legend – "

It is flattering, but Jyn still feels awkward about any hint of celebrity status. Especially since it does nothing to change the fact that her father designed the thing; and odds are, if Nairi knew that, they might not remain on speaking terms for long. Then again, she reminds herself, Leia and Winter, both Alderaan natives, welcomed her into the Alliance and gave her their full trust after that same Scarif stint.

"The truth is, there were twenty of us who went there, and there was an Alliance force that jumped in hours later to provide fire cover. At least two cruisers and two X-wings squadrons, and most of the pilots died. Of the twenty of us who landed on Scarif on the _Rogue One_ , Cassian and I were the only ones who survived, and _he_ only survived because Nawara, the guy who's bringing the relay, had a bacta tank to heal his injuries. So we're sort of heroes by default. I wasn't even a real Alliance operative at the time, I joined after we came back…"

If she hoped that her sobering explanation would help cut her exalted status down to size, her companion's wide-eyed look indicates quite the contrary, convincing Nairi beyond doubt that she is in the presence of a living legend. _One_ of them, anyway. " _I'll be blasted_. Wait a second… so this Cassian is the same Cassian who's here now – "

Jyn cannot help a grin at this. "Yep. _He_ 's the true career spy. Well, he _was_ when we met, now he's in strategy. We got married after Scarif, as soon as we got back to the Rebel base."

"So you guys go on missions together?"

Jyn shakes her head. "This is pretty much the first time since then… well, _technically_ the second, but anyway." The only other time was almost a standard year ago when she went to the abandoned planet of Talasea with a group of slicers and a platoon of Rebel commandos to set up a secret backup archive facility for Alliance data, and Cassian, who was not originally supposed to be part of that mission, found a pretext to tag along. Whether Cracken bought his reasons at face value or accepted them in the knowledge that Cassian would go crazy if anything happened to her, she will never know; either way, on the upside, it made for an unexpectedly enjoyable trip and he earned his keep, as it were, as a recon expert.

Nairi just stares at her, still too fascinated by the news.

"What about you? How did you join the Alliance?" Surely her story is no less dramatic.

The other girl turns serious again. "Because of Alderaan, of course. I was studying here to be a cybernetics expert, the computer science faculty here is supposedly among the best in the galaxy and better than that at Alderaan University. My original plan was to focus on AI programming, and kind of work at the crossroads between medicine and AI. I thought it was great to be able to help beings with brain tumours and accident damage and such by creating brain implants and spinal cord prosthetics that could take on the functions they may have lost. Not just dumping memories into a droid, but really keeping them alive."

Jyn cannot help noticing Nairi's expression becoming more animated as she talks; same way she was in the cooking class. AI was not just her original _plan_ ; it was a dream she had to give up on, because of the Empire.

"And then they blew up Alderaan and I started looking for ways to join the Rebellion. I thought I'd find an assignment on one of the cruisers, or maybe learn to fly a fighter or bomber, but when I found Win… Targeter, she put me in touch with General Cracken instead, and he persuaded me that I was more use to them here. He told me to finish my studies, but instead of AI we agreed I'd be specializing in the stuff I'm doing now, as the best way to transmit the information I was gathering. It's not as exciting a job, but this way I can do more damage. And unlike a military position, so long as I am good at doing what's expected, they don't supervise me too closely."

Jyn nods her acknowledgement. Surely compared to the destruction of one's homeworld and the loss of family and friends, a change of occupation is a really minor thing, no matter how sad.

"Well, if we can set up this relay and data drop system, maybe you could go back to the AI idea?"

Nairi smiles but shakes her head. "I'll still have to keep an eye on things here, see that nothing goes wrong. It's too important for the Alliance. I think I'll have to wait until the Empire is defeated."

"It can take a while," Jyn says with a hint of a scowl, before grinning in turn. "But then, that's what we're here for."

.

TBC (no, _really_ )

.

Notes:

Targeter was Winter's canon codename.

And frequent thunderstorms on Coruscant are a canon quirk that was exploited to spectacular effect in, IIRC, _The Bacta War_ from the X-Wing book series.


	7. three degrees of undercover

See guys, I am trying to catch up 😉

.

"Uh… sorry." Jyn stops herself from taking a step back at seeing the unfamiliar handsome man in the doorway of Nairi's apartment. Well, not entirely unfamiliar; she recognizes him from the holo at their mission brief. "You must be Davin Jace."

"I am indeed." His somewhat formal manner is belied by a broad grin. In real life, the guy does not look particularly cold or arrogant. He does not even look particularly Imperial, being as he is out of uniform, dressed in a loose shirt and plain trousers. "You must be Jan."

Jyn bites her tongue before she can correct him. Nairi may know her real name, but to the rest of Coruscant, she is, indeed, Jan Andor, Captain Andor's civilian wife. She should remind Nawara when he gets here; he is astute enough, and is probably used to her sporting different aliases by now, but a slip-up would be too costly. "Yes, I am. Nice to meet you."

"And you. Nairi will be right here, she had to run an errand. If you want, I can give you girls a ride to that archaic class of yours." He is grinning again. Not at all what Jyn expected.

"Thanks for the offer, but we'll manage." If he drops them off at the class, he might offer to also pick Nairi or both of them up afterwards, which would undermine their real plan of going about town picking dead drop locations from among the list Jyn put together. With the free time on her hands, she has had a chance to scout and select quite a few, but while Nairi may not be a Coruscant _native_ like Jyn, _un_ like Jyn, she is by now a local, and can tell which ones will be the safest, easiest and least conspicuous for informants to access. "We were thinking of maybe going shopping after class, window shopping at any rate. Maybe some other time."

"Sure. We could go out for dinner sometime, with you and your husband. If his duties allow, of course."

Now _that_ would be an interesting idea. She wonders if Cassian will be curious to meet this pair, or if there is any risk of him having met Jace elsewhere under a different guise. "I'll ask him and let you know."

"Please do. Ah, there you are." This is addressed to Nairi, who has just pulled up behind Jyn on the landing pad. "Your friend is telling me you plan to go shopping when you're done with culinary experiments."

If Nairi is surprised to hear about her apparent plans for the evening, she does not show it. "Yeah, we were thinking of checking out some of the new swoop bike models."

"Oh, not those again. The one you have now is dangerous enough." His frown and concerned tone are the first signs of his Thyferran patriarchal mentality, though, to be honest, she was expecting worse.

It looks like Nairi takes it in stride, though. "But that's the point. The new ones are more stable. Anyway, I'm not buying it just yet. Just want to take a look around, maybe test ride a couple."

"Shall I wait for you for dinner?"

This time Nairi does hesitate for a second, and curiously, looks to Jyn for a cue. It does not seem like her fiancé is insisting on the two of them having dinner together; so if she wanted an excuse to skip it, their hypothetical window-shopping excursion would suffice. Which means that she'd _like_ to join him, and is checking with Jyn that it is all right with her.

"I guess we don't have to see them all today," Jyn says, and sees the flicker of relief in Nairi's face. "We can always go again next time." Which will be a good cover for more of their real work.

"I'll see you here about twenty standard, then, Dave." Nairi takes a step toward her partner to kiss him on the cheek. The way his arm wraps around her shoulders and she leans into the gesture, it looks genuinely affectionate.

"See you then, darling. And I'll cook. I don't trust the stuff they're teaching you in that class."

xxx

"He really is a nice guy, you know." Nairi sounds almost apologetic, which is strange considering that Jyn has come to the same conclusion on her own. "Despite being an Imperial." So _that_ 's where the apologetic tone comes from.

"Come on, I know they aren't all the same."

"His family, well, the men, have all served in the Navy, it's a family tradition, even before the Empire. When I met him five years ago he'd just arrived to be stationed here, and I was still finishing my graduate degree. I was no fan of the Empire but I wasn't planning on being a Rebel, either. And then, after Alderaan… he really was there for me. So even after I started working for the Alliance, I never really thought of leaving him. Doesn't make things easy, but here we are."

Living with someone is never easy, Jyn figures. Not even the best couples have it all perfect. Not even her parents, not she and Cassian; the trick is not having it easy, but making it work.

"So… what's our real plan?" Nairi prompts her when they have ridden her "official" vehicle, a beat-up airspeeder, a few blocks away from the apartment.

"You want to go to the class? If not, we could start straight away with the dead drops."

Nairi ponders the question for a couple of seconds. "I don't mind going to the class. And it will look better for the benefit of anyone who may be watching you."

"True. It's just that I've got about thirty locations lined up, there's no way we can get to all of them between the end of the class and dinner."

"Well, like you said to Davin, we don't have to see them all today. Plus, his ground leave ends tomorrow, so if you can think of another holodrama to go to, or another shopping arcade to explore, we can arrange to meet and see the rest of them tomorrow afternoon. That way we'll have time next week to finish the code patches for data feeds from the dead drop terminals and safehouses before the relay arrives."

"Sounds good." It is true that Jyn has become quite accomplished at pretend activities by way of a cover for her real work. The holodrama trick was an accidental discovery; she found out that the way the projection theaters are built, she can slip out via the refresher exit five minutes into the action – most of them are mind-numbing Imperial propaganda anyway – and then walk over to a turbolift to ride out on a rental swoop from several dozen floors below; and then arrive at the garage two hours later with potential minders none the wiser as to whether she came back from the projection hall or from an outside excursion. Shopping is more obvious subterfuge; not as good for covering up for her and Nairi's code-writing sessions in the safehouse, but perfectly suitable for scouting trips. Besides, shopping for civilian clothes for the first time in years gives her an unexpected thrill, especially seeing how Cassian enjoys seeing her out of uniform and in elegant dresses, for a change

"Let's do that," Jyn goes on. "Let's just see the dozen or so closest to the campus after class, and leave the rest until tomorrow. That way," she shoots Nairi a teasing sideways look, "you can spend more time with your sweetheart before he's due back on board the destroyer."

" _Sweetheart_. Really," she snorts. "No, I know it sounds terribly antiquated, but I actually prefer _fiancé_."

"Are you guys really thinking of getting married?"

Nairi's grin fades. "You know, the crazy thing is, I'd like to. _He_ 'd like to for sure, he's already asked me, like, three times, and every time I've said _sure, just not right now_." Her downbeat expression gives way to a scowl. "If I'm ever busted, his career will be over, at the very least. And I'm not sure how he'll react if he ever finds out by himself."

"Ever thought of telling him?"

"I have, but it's just… the risk is too great. If it were just me, just my life we were talking about, I'd be OK with it. But I can't endanger the intel. Maybe once we've seen that the relay works, I'll – no, I won't tell him, but maybe I'll say yes next time he asks me."

That's something, Jyn thinks. Nairi's AI dream may have to wait until a decisive victory, but all things considered, her marrying Davin does not look like such a bad idea.

xxx

"How was your day, darling?"

Sitting next to her on the couch, Cassian answers her truthfully, if silently, with a sour scowl, before following up with an official answer for their eavesdroppers' benefit.

"Uneventful, but productive. I trust to have been able to contribute to the Empire's glory."

"Ah, that's just _wonderful_ , darling," she coos, and is immediately answered with a sarcastic eyeroll. In the three standard weeks they have spent here so far, Cassian has continually impressed her with his non-verbal vocabulary, using at least half a dozen different kinds of eyeroll to describe his days, and by now she has learned the meaning of each of those.

"Of course I could never dare to aspire to the invaluable contributions and wise leadership of Major Merkon," Cassian continues, struggling to keep an earnest tone. "He never fails to impress me with his intelligence and foresight."

Jyn has it easier than Cassian in terms of fooling surveillance, as no one but him can see the suppressed laughter on her face, but she still has to be careful not to snort or snicker out loud.

At this point into their stay, Cassian has found if not a cure, then at least an effective palliative for work frustration by regularly singing the praises of the Empire in general and Major Merkon in particular, in a deliciously sarcastic manner that is both extremely entertaining and somewhat unexpected. She never heard him use it before; then again, that should not be surprising as she knows that Cassian respects his Alliance peers and superiors too much to mock them.

This charade in itself would be great fun to witness, had he not recently taken to courting danger by taking it from the sitting couch onto the bed.

Where Jyn, in an ostensible effort to frustrate those spying on them, has discovered a heretofore-dormant propensity for sublimely dirty talk, Cassian, instead of trying to match her in that department, has been making full use of his seemingly unlimited capacity for sarcastic verbal mischief. He exacts a sneaky payback for her salacious suggestions by invoking his brilliant boss and the pillars of Imperial ideology at the least appropriate moments, severely testing her ability to suppress laughter, to the point that his shoulders are now covered in light bite marks from all the times she was too close to losing it.

"Have you met any interesting ambassadors?" she prompts him presently. Sure enough, if Nawara had showed up in person, Cassian would have found a way of alerting her; but this may be a cue for him to let her know if he has received any official information about the alleged Ryloth ambassador's upcoming arrival.

"Not today, my love." He raises his eyebrows for a fraction of a second to show her that he is similarly nonplussed.

She picks up a datapad from the low table and types up a note on a blank page. _Do you think we should send him a message? Our data drop arrangement is almost done._

She deletes the words as soon as Cassian has read them; she formats the datapad memory every night, but it won't hurt to be careful.

He takes the pad from her hand and types the reply, likewise erasing it once she has read it. _Let's wait a couple of days. We agreed he'd be here in a month and that is tomorrow. And I still need time for my data gathering._

Jyn nods her acknowledgement. The data gathering, of course, refers to the surreptitious daily data sweeps he does at his duty station, using several identical rigged datacards with undetectable virus-like executables that let him access and copy mainframe files without leaving any trace of the cards ever being plugged in. Every evening he brings the day's spoils to her on one of the cards, and she takes it to Nairi the following day, or the day after if they cannot arrange to meet, for the data to be sent on to the Alliance. Trouble is, the data they need most, the records that can inform them about the Emperor's upcoming travels, will only be within their reach once Cassian gets additional access rights as "Ambassador" Nawara's personal minder.

"Oh well," she mock-sighs, picking up the presumable thread of their pretend verbal conversation. "There'll be another chance tomorrow. How about we go out for dinner? I spent so much time shopping today that I never got around to setting the cooking program." In truth, they have come to consider the opportunity to regularly eat out as one of the best perks of their assignment, a welcome change from dry rations and MREs at the Alliance HQ officers' mess.

"I'd be happy to." This time, the good humour in his response is fully reflected in his face. "In fact I was about to suggest it myself." Their trips around Coruscant, be it to restaurants or under the pretence of sightseeing, have another collateral benefit, giving them a precious opportunity to actually talk, at least when they are out of the rigged speeder. It is there that he occasionally lets slip the details of the Imperials' detestable actions, but most of the time they just chat about whatever comes to mind, and she can tell that his reluctance to discuss Imperial business is due, in an equal if not greater measure, not just to the desire to shield her from ugly business, but from a need to forget and unwind.

Ironically, here, in the enemy's lair, they are probably having more unadulterated fun than they normally do on the _Home One_.There, they are often busy or tired, and their free time is often spent talking about Alliance business and looking at data. Here, unable to do either, they can just enjoy each other's company.

It reminds her, oddly, of the time they were stationed on Yavin.

When they came back from Dorvalla, after the Scarif stint, they got five standard days' leave by way of a honeymoon, which they mostly spent at their new quarters, save for a couple of bike rides into the jungle; but later on, they kept on riding around the verdant moon when they both had free time, and while the scenery could not be more different, the romantic chatter they share on their outings now is occasionally reminiscent of those times. She missed Yavin after they had to leave, six months after the battle; it was a happy place for them as places go, even if they were still at an early stage of finding their footing as a couple. What followed was a year and a half of jumping around and arguing about which of them was putting themselves at greater risk; and then, when they got past that hurdle, a year on Hoth, the base draughty, cramped and sort of forlorn, so much so that it was a relief to go back to living on a capital ship after that.

She wonders how they will ultimately remember their time on Coruscant.

They both are making good progress on their assignment, but all too often, she is uneasy with foreboding. They are not supposed to be enjoying this so much, which can only mean one thing.

They are likely headed for trouble.

.

TBC

.

I will aim to post the next chapter, where Nawara shows up and they hit the first glitch on this mission, by next weekend.


	8. the ambassador

She can tell Cassian has good news the moment he is back from his duty shift. There is a sparkle in his eyes and a spring in his step as he walks up to her to kiss her, and for once, she can hardly wait until they start their pretend chat so she can have her guess confirmed.

"Did you have a good day of service, darling?" she delivers her habitual opening line as they sit down on the couch.

For once, he has to tone down his good cheer to answer her in a less excited voice than his grin suggests.

"Excellent, love. I do my best to follow the Major's example in the way he approaches his duties, and I'd like to think it's beginning to bring results. Besides," he continues, reaching over for the datapad, "I received a new assignment today that will give me an extra chance to prove my diligence to my superiors."

 _He is arriving tomorrow_ , he types in the meantime.

"I'm so glad to hear it, darling." Her happy reaction is fitting to both of his remarks.

 _Right on time_ , she types back; she suddenly feels silly for having worried about Nawara's arrival.

She does not want to ask a direct question for fear of being considered too inquisitive by the eavesdroppers-that-be, and expects Cassian to overtly disclose as much detail as he may consider safe under the pretence of bragging. Naturally, he is in on the game and willing to oblige.

"A new ambassador is coming here, and I am to act as his liaison and oversee the protocol arrangements." Great; so their fellow Rebel slicers have done a good job tweaking his peers's assignments to make sure this particular task was left to him.

"Where's he from?" With the Empire's many prejudices, the chances of the ambassador not being male would be practically zero.

"Ryloth, apparently. A certain Firith Olan." She recalls their chat on Dorvalla and Nawara's sneaky plan to use his cousin's name. "It's high time that planet showed more deference to His Imperial Majesty."

"I'm sure, darling, that as soon as he sets foot on Coruscant, he'll realise it. It's such a magnificent world."

"Indeed, love, it is."

 _Remember, you two need to agree on the way the three of us can meet if there are problems_ , she types.

 _I know,_ he replies. _I think it is best if I get you to "meet" him socially first. It will give us an excuse if we are seen with him later / if you need to urgently contact him._

Not an airtight excuse, perhaps, but the best they can get.

 _Will he host a reception?_ she types. That way Cassian could prompt Nawara to include spouses in the invitations he will be sending out.

 _For the first visit, the Empire hosts the opening reception. The Ambassador hosts the closing one_.

The pause is getting too long and she'd better say something soon, or else the eavesdropping algorithm may flag an anomaly in the conversation; so she picks up on both the line he typed and on the verbal exchange where they left off. "And I'm sure the Empire will give him a welcome typical of its magnanimity."

"Indeed. We are planning a grand reception for him that should be a humbling experience for an offworlder from a backwater planet."

Right on cue; now is her chance to insinuate a pretext. "Oh _daaarling_ …" she begins in a voice that is at once cooing and faintly petulant.

"Yes, dear?" He turns to her in anticipation of the performance that he knows will follow.

"Is there any chance I could attend? It would be a _dream_ if I could get to see one of these events with my own eyes! And I've bought this _beautiful_ dress that I can't wait to wear. I know I'm being presumptuous, but maybe you could ask the Major to let me accompany you? Just this once, darling? It would mean so much to me, I could tell all my friends on Corellia…"

He has been grinning at her throughout, and his final non-verbal reaction is a special variety of eyeroll meant to convey amusement rather than exasperation, before he delivers his official answer in a pretend serious voice. "I'll ask. The Major is a wise and understanding man, so he may be sympathetic to your desire to experience more of the Empire's glory."

"Thank you, darling," she says once she has conquered the impulse to snicker. _That way,_ she types, _we can hatch a plan to take him to a social event later, to use as cover for a meeting._

He gives her a thumbs-up for a real answer. "If the Major allows it, it's him you'll need to thank," he says in the meantime, as he nestles closer to her and puts an arm around her shoulders. "I shall ask him tomorrow."

xxx

For a soulless regime built on blind obedience to a crazed dictator, the Empire sure knows how to entertain… albeit in a rather intimidating way.

The reception in honour of the Ryloth ambassador may not be the grandest event on the Coruscant social calendar – not even in the space of a standard week, probably – but it is certainly impressive. The reception hall alone, while admittedly lacking in warmth and cosiness, is a statement of grandeur, an exercise in opulence, what with the intricate gilded carvings decorating its gleaming walls, elaborate chandeliers descending like crystal cascades from its cathedral ceiling, and the sweeping staircase at one of its ends providing a grand entrance for the dignitaries arriving from within the Palace, unlike, say, lesser mortals like Cassian and herself who came in from the outside. It is too brightly lit to be either relaxing or particularly welcoming, but this way, the attendees can be sure that they can show off their splendid garments in their full glory; and while the music lacks either character or heart, it is adequate for the purpose of creating just enough background noise to lend a degree of privacy to the murmured conversations.

Jyn does not feel particularly compelled to engage in chit-chat with the other attendees, and most of them are too busy currying favour with beings of greater importance than themselves to pay attention to an unknown young woman, even a reasonably pretty one. Her "benefactor" Major Merkon, after listening to her profuse expressions of gratitude, and figuring that she was of no political or personal interest to him, promptly excused himself to go charm the really important invitees as best he could, leaving her with Cassian, who then likewise had to escape to go fetch his charge the Ambassador, seeing how the guests had assembled to greet him.

The fanfare is so sudden and sharp that she almost chokes on a bite of braised nerf she had picked from an hors-d'oeuvres tray carried around by one of a dozen hovering server droids. The high-pitched voice of the announcer is not much better, but at least it brings the welcome news. "His Imperial Majesty's Court is pleased to extend a welcome to the Ambassador of Ryloth. His Excellency the Honourable Firith Olan," the announcer concludes, making a sweeping gesture toward the staircase.

Nawara looks perfect for the role; impeccably attired in fancy, heavy, gold-embroidered robes, the _lekku_ draped regally around his neck, as he glides down the stairs, taking in the venue and the assembly. Cassian, walking down the stairs by his side, is equally impressive; not as resplendent but looking positively dashing in an Imperial dress uniform. For the briefest of instants there is a faint sparkle in Nawara's scarlet eyes when he sees her, but his expression immediately reverts to the default mixture of self-importance and grudging awe.

The exalted attendees have already assembled in a receiving line ordered by rank, like a swarm of insects obeying a pre-programmed instinct, ready to greet and be introduced to the Ambassador. As Nawara goes through the lengthy round of introductions, Jyn whiles away the time walking slowly around the hall, less crowded now that the commotion has congregated along its central axis, reminding herself to look fascinated. In truth, she is not particularly impressed by her surroundings – unlike she would be by, say, a spot of natural beauty or even a creative marvel of architecture – but her role as the naïve Corellian wife, not to mention her pitch to Cassian a couple of days ago, demand a display of wide-eyed wonder. And, to give the Empire due credit, the finger food is not bad; now that the important guests are otherwise occupied, she has her pick of the server droids' fare.

"Ah, there you are, darling…" Cassian's voice catches her halfway through eating a _rallin_ fruit; she is not nearly as startled as she was at the earlier fanfare, but has to hurry swallowing the remainder of it. "I mentioned to His Excellency the Ambassador that I was here with my wife and he expressed a wish to meet you." There is just the tiniest hint of amusement in his face as he says it.

"I would be so honoured," she says breathlessly. As well as pleased to see Nawara and undoubtedly entertained by the ensuing exchange.

They make their way halfway around the hall, back to the bottom of the staircase where Nawara looks to have set up camp, as it were, for the time being, with the guests milling about him.

"Your Excellency," Cassian begins as he steps to Nawara's side, "I hope I am not interrupting."

"Not at all," Nawara purrs, flicking a bright-eyed glance at Jyn; there is a rather corpulent human next to him who looks to be eager to resume whatever pitch he was making, but he is luckily silent for the moment.

"I would like to take the opportunity to introduce my wife Jan," Cassian continues, "Jan Andor; Ambassador Firith Olan."

"It is a pleasure to meet you, my dear." Nawara's address after the ceremonious reciprocal bows is accompanied by a genuine grin. "Your husband has been a great help to me so far. I hope you are enjoying this reception."

"It is wonderful, Your Excellency. I am so very happy to have been given this opportunity to come here, and very honoured to meet you," she answers in the most gushing voice she can muster.

"It certainly leads to an even greater appreciation of the magnificent grandeur that is our glorious Empire and of the gracious hospitality of our generous hosts." Nawara is a natural at this; and he and Cassian can probably do a running contest as to who can best pull off the veiled sarcasm routine. "But then, I suppose you have plenty of opportunities to enjoy it, seeing how the Co-Captain is stationed on Coruscant." Fortunately, he is quick enough to correct his slip of the tongue regarding Cassian's real rank, so it passes for a mere stammer.

She does her best to look wistful. "We are recent arrivals here, Your Excellency, and the Captain's duties have kept him very busy most of the time. But I hope to have more opportunities… eventually."

She has just given Nawara his cue; and sure enough, he wastes no time taking it, especially seeing how his bulky hanger-on is showing impatience at this extended chat the Ambassador has been having with a virtual unknown. "In that case, it will be my pleasure, my dear, to be of help, as it were. You are, of course, invited to the closing reception I shall be hosting before my departure next week. And in the meantime, I will be happy to invite you – you _and_ your husband, of course – to the performance of _The Emperor's Triumph_ that I am planning to attend at the _Majestic_ one of these days. It is a Mon Calamari ballet," he adds for her benefit, seeing her genuine expression of mild bewilderment. "I am a big admirer of the genre, and I hope you will find it rewarding."

Of course, if things go as planned, Jyn may never find out if Mon Calamari ballet is really her thing; but for now, she does her best to show effusive gratitude. "I am sure I will, Your Excellency! I am so thrilled, it is so very kind of you to invite me, to invite us to accompany you…"

"In that case, I shall see you again soon, my dear." Nawara makes a slight bow, signifying that her "audience" with him is over. "It has been a pleasure to meet you."

"It has been a pleasure for me too, not to mention a great honour, Your Excellency," she says, and makes her best attempt at a curtsy.

Not to mention, quite entertaining and potentially handy for their plan.

xxx

 _How about dinner at The Abregado Corner?_

Cassian's message is perfectly timed; she just came back from the safehouse where she and Nairi finished and tested the last of their code patches, linking up the dead drop terminals they had selected and set up; and if anything, this calls for a minor celebration. And she would love a chance to talk to him without having to put on a performance.

When she makes her way to the busy, noisy tapcafe, a recent favourite of theirs for those very reasons, it is immediately obvious to her that Cassian, likely as not, has cause of his own to celebrate. The fact that he pulls her into a hug would not in itself be anything out of the ordinary, but it is not often that he looks so, well, radiant.

Once they are settled in the private booth, and she has discreetly run the scan using the datapad hidden in her handbag, she finally asks the burning question.

"Good news?"

" _Great_ news," he corrects her, still smiling. "I got the plans."

"The schedule?" Meaning, of course, the schedule of Palpatine's upcoming travels; one of the two reasons they are on Coruscant.

"Yep." He pulls a datacard out of his uniform breast pocket and hands it to her across the table. So they were right in assuming that his duties upon Nawara's arrival would give him greater access, and a better shot at getting to these plans. "When are you next seeing your friend?"

"We were done with the software patches today so we didn't plan to meet tomorrow… but I'll call her first thing in the morning to suggest something," she adds quickly. She would have done it tonight, but she knows that Nairi's fiancé is once again on ground leave, and it would look odd if Jyn were to urgently summon her this late in the evening. "May I?" she pulls out her clean datapad that she brought along just in case, its screen now covered by a rectangle of privacy film that leaves the contents of the screen visible to the reader's eyes only, in case there are hidden cameras installed in the ceiling.

"So long as you don't open the files, just look at the headers," he cautions as she slides the card in. He is right, of course; even with the best of precautions this intel is about as secret and dangerous and potentially fatal as it gets, and she is probably too impatient, but cannot help it.

"Sure. I'll format the pad again as soon as I get out the card."

The titles, as it happens, tell her enough. _Kamino 7847; Wayland 7849/7850; Byss 7853/7856_ ; clearly this is a succession of trips on a sequence of dates over the current month, or stopovers on the same trip, though the latter is less likely, seeing how Palpatine avoids lengthy voyages and hardly ever travels sublight; and each file likely contains the detailed agenda and required arrangements for each one.

"What's the matter?"

Cassian's anxious query upon seeing her face fall startles her, but not nearly as much as what she has just seen.

As it is, it takes her a few seconds to regain her voice.

"Fifth line from the bottom," she says weakly, as she hands him the datapad.

When he sees it, his face falls, too. Surely he had no time, once he had accessed and was copying the data, to study the details, but now the implicit news hits him almost as hard as it does her.

They both remember Scarif, and the desperate minutes they spent frantically scrolling through the archive index in search of the Death Star plans… and the codename by which she finally identified them.

 _Stardust_. Her childhood nickname.

And now, that nightmarish name is staring back at them in impassive black lettering; and it is crushingly obvious that they are not looking at a historical reference.

 _Stardust II 7857/7863_ _._

The nightmare is back.

.

TBC

.

Notes For anyone wondering, I arbitrarily set the dates as "standard" days counted from the presumable date of the Empire's creation, ca. 21.5 years earlier. The three planets are all "real", from the prequels and EU storylines (anyone guessing the common denominator here? ;) ).

This one was slightly shorter than I originally intended, as I decided to shift its final scene into the next chapter for greater effect here. That said, I am kind of impatient to put the next one up and hope to do so later today.

In case you picked this tale up after reading the first five chapters last year, seeing how I left everyone hanging for bloody ages, it might help to look through Chapter 4 before reading the next one, just to recall the gist - I cannot be more precise as it would ruin whatever surprise there may be.


	9. the rescuer

"Guys…" She stops herself, seeing Nawara's eyes flicker, albeit in amusement, at the informal address. "Gentlemen."

Nawara and Cassian both turn to face her on the unlit rooftop terrace. They made a quick arispeeder jump here, to the top of a nearby office building, from the _Majestic_ during the intermission of the ballet, under the pretext of going to a spot from which Nawara could best admire the panorama of the Palace in the distance. To be honest, Jyn is glad to be getting a breath of fresh air, although _fresh_ is a relative term in this city. The stifling humidity of the theatre, what with the stage consisting of an enormous blob of warm water for the dancers to move in, made her dizzy, and while the spectacle itself is beautiful despite its ostensible subject matter, its downright mesmerising quality, with the slow-paced, sombre music and the dancers' languid pirouettes, made it hard for her to stay awake, so much so that Cassian had to lightly pinch her arm on one occasion when she had drifted off.

Now she has completed the bug sweep using the datapad hidden in the handbag she retrieved from the speeder storage compartment, and is keen to get her companions' attention so they can make the most of their brief freedom to quickly swap notes on the state of affairs.

By now she and Cassian have recovered, for the most part, from the initial painful shock upon their discovery of the Empire's new Death Star project, not least because they know that by now, the precious intel is safely in Alliance hands; she and Nairi made sure of that the following morning. Hopefully, their fellow Rebels will manage to find out where the infernal thing _is_ before the Emperor's intended trip there in two weeks' time; unlike all the other trip files that had full coordinates of the planets and locations, this one was all but empty, with only three lines in lieu of an agenda: _Update on works progress; Asset retrieval; and Operational test_ , the last of these being the most bone-chilling. And hopefully they will be able to once again exploit its built-in weakness to blast it out of existence. Once again, so much hangs on the precarious notion of hope; but it is the best they have, so long as they make sure they have done all they can to help it along.

With Cassian's part of the mission _de facto_ over, what they are left with now is the matter of Jyn and Nairi installing the comm relay, disguised as a repulsorlift pallet that is currently stored aboard Nawara's ship, so as to make Alliance data gathering on Coruscant into a seamlessly automated process from the moment an informant enters data into a dead drop. And here, it seems, if Nawara's distracted demeanour is an indication, they have hit a snag, to say the least.

Sure enough, Nawara's next words confirm her fear.

"It looks like we may have a problem getting the equipment off my ship," he begins, his voice a dejected growl. "I was informed soon after my arrival, when I said I wanted to transfer personal effects from the ship to my quarters, that the Imperial Palace concierge would take care of that." Including, presumably, the porter droid service. "And they would provide their own repulsorlift conveyance, and a service droid to do the loading and unloading." Just as she thought; and to take a discreet look through the contents, to be sure. "So there was no plausible way I could insist on bringing my own pallet."

" _Sith_ ," she hisses; next to her, Cassian just scowls.

"And of course if I say I need to bring the pallet on account of fixing a minor malfunction, they will surely insist on taking care of the diagnostics," Nawara continues. Which will immediately reveal the true contents of the pallet; it may look like a repulsorlift assembly, but _that_ is arguably the least important part of its insides.

"What if we trigger some kind of emergency at the spaceport?" Jyn ventures. "And then you or Cassian could go there on the pretence of checking on the ship, and take the pallet out in the general confusion?"

Cassian shakes his head. "It will trigger a lockdown. First thing they'll do in case of emergency, they'll seal the area and prohibit anyone on the outside from getting in. And if we are already inside by then, they'll keep us in there and do a thorough search and sweep on anyone and anything getting out."

He is right, of course, and Jyn is briefly at a loss when Cassian makes a counter-suggestion.

"What if we sabotage the porter droid? So Nawara can bring it along to his ship, as if to fetch the belongings, and then trigger the malfunction so that the droid becomes useless and Nawara has to take the pallet himself? As far as I can tell, they select these porter droids from a pool, it's a pretty random draw," he continues, making a counterpoint to his own argument, "and a software malfunction will be visible in the logs, so if we, say, infect it with a virus it will be discovered later. But if we play it right, say, if you and Nairi can break into the porter droid pool database, tweak it so we can pick the first one on the duty roster, then apprehend the droid on its next run and infect it with a time-triggered virus, and then make sure the same droid comes up for Nawara's request…" He trails off and shakes his head in resignation. "No; too damn complicated."

It really isn't; but the set-up would require more time than they have, what with Nawara's stay officially ending in three days.

"What if we stage a break-in," Jyn begins, figuring she could use a less sophisticated aspect of her quasi-criminal past, "say, I get to the landing bay in disguise and steal the crate pretending to be a robber?"

This time both of her companions turn on her.

"Absolutely out of the question," Cassian scoffs.

"Too risky, if you ask me," Nawara echoes; his assessment may be worded in less clear-cut terms, but is no less conclusive for it. "They have state-of-the-art security arrangements there, and more surveillance cameras than I could count. If you are apprehended, and it is likely that you _will_ be no matter how good you are, the consequences will be catastrophic"

On second thoughts, she cannot argue with that.

"I guess you could pretend you need something you left on board," she ventures to Nawara instead, "so as to go to your ship without prior warning and get out before anyone notices." It's a slim chance, but still.

Nawara's eyes darken before he shakes his head. "It could put Cassian into danger. It is true that I only took the minimum of my possessions off the ship, so as to have a reason to use the pallet later; but Cassian is supposed to be watching me, so if I slip away to the spaceport on my own, it will earn him a severe reprimand for negligence. Or for a breach of protocol, if he goes there himself at my request without informing his superiors; and if he does inform them, the protocol regarding the concierge will still kick in and we'll be back to where we started." Cassian is about to protest, but Nawara continues before he can say it. "Let us leave it for a last resort option, as it were."

"Agreed," Cassian says, before adding, "I suppose you girls could drop a line to our friends to let them know our status, and check if they have any suggestions." Jyn is, at least, pleased to hear him say it; they may be running out of time, and probably out of luck, but the last thing she wants to see happen is Cassian putting himself in danger if it can somehow be avoided.

"Let us wait until after the reception," Nawara concludes as they are walking back to the speeder, so as to admire, or rather endure, the second half of the ballet. "It will leave us one more day in which to do it, as I won't be flying out until the following evening, and if it becomes obvious that I cannot leave yet, I'll find a way to sabotage the ship to delay my departure. And if the worst comes to the worst," he concludes with a faint grin, "and Cassian or I have to sneak away to bring in the pallet, I can always say that I insisted on seeing another one of these performances before I leave, and simply _had to_ wear a different outfit to it."

They may be in trouble, but at least they are in pretty good company, Jyn figures.

xxx

As it happens, by the time of the official final reception for Nawara's visit, they are no closer to finding a good solution, and Jyn suspects, with growing dread, that Cassian may have to take matters into his hands, after all, thus endangering his standing with the narrow-minded and cowardly Merkon and who knows what other Imperial figureheads.

In itself, Cassian running afoul of regulations, especially a relatively minor protocol point such as this, an infringement apparently committed at an ambassador's request, seeking to please said ambassador, should not be so terrifying a prospect; especially seeing how they will be leaving Coruscant as soon as the relay is in place. But in a vast bureaucracy such as the one they are dealing with, with its sheer incompetence and inefficiency being its strongest pillars, a deliberate deviation from procedure in the interests of expediency is a transgression bordering on sacrilege. And knowing how the Empire's widespread incompetence is only matched, if not outdone, by its widespread paranoia, there will be no telling what manner of suspicion it may end up raising, and what kind of background check it may trigger.

Cassian's cover story is practically airtight – she checked the records herself – but only so far as the Imperials limit themselves to the records. What if they decide to contact any of his alleged previous supervisors personally, to verify references? What if, alarmed by the results of such a check, they start scrutinising their family life, and specifically, _her_ pursuits while on Coruscant, and take an interest in her close friendship with Nairi? It will open up a cave of space slugs so deep and pungent as to obliterate all their achievements on this mission, and put all of them – her, Cassian, Nairi, Nawara, and possibly Nawara's family – in immediate danger.

Still, as Jyn enters the reception area on Cassian's arm, she tries to push the dark thoughts into the back of her mind, and keep up the wide-eyed backwater-girl manner she successfully practiced at the other event; it won't help any of them if she gives away the game by being obviously preoccupied. And on this occasion at least, by way of a small mercy, the setting and arrangements are much more to her liking, making her feel less like the proverbial Mon Calamari out of the ocean; this time, as she walks around after Cassian leaves to go to the alleged Ambassador's side, her appreciative looks are not a pretence.

This time, in line with the rules of protocol, the choice of venue and finishings was left to Nawara, and the result, while a far cry from the tastes and customs prevalent on Ryloth, is not unlike those of his real present-day home. Instead of the huge-yet-still-claustrophobic closed and windowless chamber, Nawara picked a spacious open terrace, now furnished with various kinds of plush seating, liberally dotted with lush plants and festooned with hanging vines, their shades varying from bright green to light purple to deep red to shades of turquoise. And instead of the harsh light of the enormous chandeliers, the terrace is illuminated by a myriad of tiny lights, twinkling in the brief Coruscant twilight like a swarm of fireflies in the approaching night. All in all, as good a setting as she can hope for to help assuage her worry.

She has already talked to Nawara, and given him her official extensive thanks for the unforgettable time she spent attending the events during his visit, and has listened to his very convincing entreaties for her and _the Captain_ to come visit him on Ryloth; so that regardless of whether they really see more of each other in the coming days – a growing likelihood, unfortunately – her public acquaintance with him is seen to have run its proper course. All she can do now is try to relax and enjoy the pleasant surroundings, and while away the time watching the humans and various assorted beings making up the attendees.

Most of these are rather dour creatures; even when she cannot be completely certain given the species, their expressions seem to have a default setting of bored and arrogant… except when they are talking to superiors or beings of undisputed greater importance, when those same faces become cloyingly obsequious, and those same pursed lips produce bursts of artificial laughter. But as her eyes sweep over the terrace, she suddenly finds her gaze positively riveted to a new arrival.

She moves with an easy, sinuous grace; effortlessly gliding through the crowd, her every gesture part of a dance, her every smile a promise, every word a caress as she exchanges bits of small talk with apparent strangers, eliciting admiring glances and appreciative comments in her wake; so that, in the space of a few minutes, everyone's undivided attention belongs to this heavenly vision. And even if Jyn can tell when her mirth and flattery is too blatant to be entirely sincere, she is certain that the objects of such gracious attention are none the wiser; and Jyn, despite having spent some time undercover, is blown away by the confidence and ease with which this elegant beauty twists the assorted guests around her little finger.

And this divine apparition is none other than Nawara's wife.

It has been almost four years since Jyn last saw her in the easy comfort of her Dorvalla home; and if she thought Shani was beautiful then, she is now amazed by how stunning she looks when she puts in a special effort, as appears to have been the case. Jyn herself spent longer than usual getting ready for this reception, sweeping her hair into an elaborate updo and picking out the best pairs of fancy shoes and long gloves to match her dress, a long fitted black sleeveless gown with just enough subtle sparkle to take it from severe to sexy; she was pleased when Cassian complimented her on that latter part. But try as she might, she could not possibly compete with Shani, who, wearing a dress that looks like she has had a layer of liquid gold painted onto her, is clearly in a class of her own – and she can pull it off despite being nearly twice Jyn's age.

Once the initial shock has subsided, Jyn hurriedly makes her way back toward Nawara. There is no way he is still unaware of his wife's arrival; but Jyn's overarching concern at this point is to make it clear to him that she, and Cassian by extension, had been completely ignorant of her plans.

She catches Nawara next to a serving droid laden with a tray of drinks; with everyone's attention glued to Shani, he is, for once, free from his recent retinue.

"It wasn't me… wasn't us," she mouths to him silently.

"I didn't think so," he replies, with a mixture of wry resignation and reluctant admiration at his wife's antics.

And at this very moment, as if suddenly noticing that Nawara is standing on this same terrace, Shani walks away from her crowd of admirers and sashays over to them.

"There you are, darling," she purrs to her husband. "I do apologise for being so badly delayed." And, while Nawara is still gathering his thoughts for a suitable reply to this unexpected statement, she goes on: "My ship had a problem with its ion flux stabiliser, and it took the better part of two days to get it fixed. _Two days_ , can you imagine? But I'm being rude," she changes tack so smoothly that Jyn is caught by surprise. "Please do introduce me to your charming guest." How in the world did she guess that Jyn was here under false pretences and supposedly unknown to her, anyway?

To this request, at least, Nawara can give a quick and easy answer. "Of course, darling. Allow me to introduce Jan Andor. She is married to the liaison officer who has provided me invaluable help during the time I've spent here on Coruscant.

"Ah, how charming. I am Ambassador Olan's wife, of course."

"Your Excellency, I am honoured to meet you."

"Oh please don't be so formal, my dear," she protests, regaling Jyn with an encouraging smile. "You can call me Jayla." The real Firith Olan's wife, Jyn recalls from the quick check she did after their initial chat with Nawara. "Now tell me," she goes on, apparently fascinated by Jyn's person, "how long have you been here?"

"Just under a standard month," Jyn replies, still baffled. It looks like Shani's intentions are far from disruptive, and she knows enough about their mission to play along; but Jyn still cannot fathom what her real game is.

Unless, of course, Cassian has somehow tricked them all and has kept her up his sleeve as a last-resort trump card.

"It must be such a fascinating experience," Shani continues, "there is so much to do here, so many places and events to go to. I envy you, my dear, you're so young and pretty and you have all this excitement ahead of you. I do hope you're making the most of it."

"I'm trying," Jyn says with a meek smile. Sure enough, the real stuff she is doing on Coruscant is pretty exciting in its own right, but that part is best left unsaid.

"Well, I'm sure you'll be enjoying it more and more as time goes on. You know, I just thought of something…" This time, no matter how natural Shani's delivery, Jyn is convinced that the idea that will follow won't have been a sudden inspiration. "…I have something that could come in really handy for you." While Jyn is still at a loss as to where she is going with this, Shani continues her happy banter. "I have a stash of dresses in my room that I've had for the past couple of months, and I've already worn each of them at least twice. You and I are about the same size, so you could probably wear them with minimal alterations." Before Jyn can open her mouth to protest this generous offer, Shani goes on, "Let me show them to you, so you can pick any that you like. Or if you like, you can take them all. I know how generous Firith is, I'm sure he'll be happy to buy me a new set. I was getting tired of these anyway, and I'd rather not have to haul them back to Ryloth… and you can wear them here and persuade your husband that you need the right occasions to put them on. Come on, let's go, I'll show you what I'm talking about."

She takes Jyn's arm and leads her away from Nawara's side; and while Jyn is not resisting, her parting glance at Nawara is just as bewildered as his stare back at the two of them.

Seeing this, Shani addresses both of them in a low, steady voice; an abrupt departure from her carefree twittering mere moments ago.

"Don't worry the two of you. I know what I'm doing."

xxx

"How do you like these?"

Shani's question should be easy to answer… except that Jyn still has trouble closing her mouth, her eyes staring beyond the heap of colourful vine silk and velvet that the other woman has theatrically swept aside…

…to reveal the gunmetal grey of a repulsorlift pallet underneath.

 _The_ repulsorlift pallet.

Belatedly, Jyn finds her voice. "This- these are wonderful. I like them a lot," she adds, a bit steadier.

Shani does not miss a beat. "Perfect. Let's get them out of here and over to your place, then. I'm sure my dear husband can handle the reception on his own. I'm not even an official invitee… seeing how I was late flying into Coruscant," she adds, undoubtedly for the benefit of ubiquitous eavesdroppers. "I have a landspeeder parked in the basement, and we can make it back here in no time."

xxx

It should be a really short ride, just over a quarter of a standard hour; but since Shani had insisted she should drive, it was inevitable that they would get lost.

 _Apparently_ inevitable, that is, as half a dozen blocks from Jyn's apartment, they left Shani's airspeeder under the pretence of hailing a droid-driven cab, and went over, with the precious pallet in tow, to the nearest speeder rental.

By now Jyn is no longer surprised, though still infinitely impressed, when Shani pulls a sweeper kit out of her purse two blocks into their second ride.

"We're clear," she announces a minute later; "Where do you really want to take it?"

Jyn wants to kick herself for the awkward way she is fumbling for words, though her companion appears completely unruffled. "There's a… safehouse… I set up, where my… colleague and I have been working on this… relay switch. I think it's best if we take it there. And then we can bring some of these dresses to our apartment to keep up the pretext."

Shani's response is a good-natured laugh. "Oh, I meant it when I said you could keep them all. I know the two of you won't be staying here long if everything goes well, but the truth is, I got this lot on Nar Shaddaa at the last moment when I was asked to come here. I'm not even sure they're the right size, but you can look through them and keep any you like and discard the rest."

 _Was asked to come here?_

"Was it Cassian who- who asked you to help us?" Jyn ventures, remembering her earlier guess.

Shani chuckles again. "My dear, it may be news to you but we have acquaintances in common besides our respective husbands. Such as, for example…" Jyn is quite sure that Shani is stalling for greater dramatic effect here. "…Targeter."

She needn't have bothered to amp up the intrigue, seeing how Jyn's jaw drops again in the space of a half hour. And in a brilliant stroke of virtual lightning, the pieces finally fall into place.

Shani, who Jyn has always seen and somewhat dismissed as the quintessential trophy wife, sweet and charming but at the same time, vain and shallow; Shani, whose apparent pursuits in life are limited to shopping and keeping up her good looks; the willful but seemingly innocuous woman whose greatest, if not only, achievement seems to be her stable marriage blessed with pretty children; this same Shani has been an Alliance operative all along, with Jyn none the wiser.

And, for all she can tell, with _her own husband_ of twenty-plus years none the wiser, either.

And of course, her frequent and extensive shopping trips and spa visits have been the best cover for what she has been really doing all this time.

"I- I didn't know," she manages at last.

"I know you didn't know." Shani looks supremely amused at Jyn's predicament. "In your defence, my dear, I am not part of the regular network, so I don't report to your boss." In which case, as she undoubtedly correctly assumed, the chances of her and Jyn's paths crossing would be considerably higher. "My first Alliance contact was a fellow Twi'lek named Cham Syndulla, and my first Alliance handler, as it were, was Captain Draven." Before he was made General, then. "And then I became Targeter's personal asset; well, one of them. But instead of regular intelligence gathering, seeing how I mostly lived on a quiet world and had no intention of leaving my family, she has been using me more as a… problem-solver for situations such as this one." And what a problem-solver she is, indeed.

"Naturally, when you mentioned to… Winter… that you were planning to recruit my husband for a mission," Shani continues with a sly grin, "she immediately informed me, and while we agreed that I should not interfere if everything went as planned, she also promised me that she'd let me know if anything went wrong, and would let me go in and handle things as I saw fit, within reasonable limits. Which is exactly what we did. As soon as you and our fellow operative here sent your latest message saying that you were having trouble getting this," she gestures to the pallet in the back of the speeder, "off Nawara's ship, I picked up those dresses and flew over here, figuring I'd find a way to borrow it on the pretence of hauling my belongings. And it was really easy in the end. I met an Imperial minister's wife who had just arrived at the VIP landing pad adjacent to mine – mind you, I flew in as the Ambassador's wife after Winter gave me the right credentials – and we got talking about girly business, and when I complained to her that I needed to get something off my husband's ship, all she had to do was call her husband and have him give the authorization."

Jyn just shakes her head instead of an answer. Yeah, _really easy_ , except that she cannot think of anyone else who could convincingly impersonate an ambassador's spouse and completely charm an Imperial minister's wife in the space of a few minutes.

xxx

"How did you- how did you start working for the Alliance?" Jyn asks after they have unloaded the pallet at the safehouse, and set the course for her and Cassian's apartment to keep up the pretence of leaving the gowns.

"It was…" for the first time this incredible evening, Shani looks thoughtful, even sad. "It wasn't an entirely independent decision. When I was your age, my dear, I was recently married with two very young children and an important husband who did not care about politics; and even if I suspected that the Empire was up to no good, it never occurred to me to fight it or otherwise oppose it. Most of the major clans on Ryloth were trying to remain neutral, as they still are, at least on the surface. Cham, one of my childhood friends, was one of the few who openly opposed it, and he was in a lot of trouble for it. The Olans, on the other hand, were one of the few families who were willing to ally themselves with the Empire. Nawara wanted no part of it but kept it to himself, and I also thought it wasn't my place to aggravate matters."

"And then I found out that two of my sisters had been captured and enslaved when they travelled off Ryloth under the pretence of a dancing engagement at a music festival, and were killed when trying to escape. And the Empire had covered it up, as the whole scheme had been devised by one of its contractors. There was no going back after that." By now there is no trace left of her happy-go-lucky party persona. "Nawara tried to intervene, to bring them to justice, but all it achieved was to get him to break with the rest of the clan and leave Ryloth. I resolved then and there to find a way of helping the Rebels, but I couldn't involve my family. My husband had already paid a high price for supporting my cause, and my children were too small to be orphaned."

"It wasn't that hard," Shani concludes. Then again, Jyn wonders if there is anything she _does_ consider a hard task. "I just went on a lot of shopping trips, and those were the perfect cover for a lot of other things. For one thing, Nawara would never want to come along. For another, I could be away for days and he'd never know if I'd spent half a day or an entire week picking out the things I'd end up buying, and if I'd paid what I said for them or if part of the money went to cover… detours."

So Winter's decision to keep her and Cassian in the dark regarding Shani's identity had as much to do with respecting her continued wishes to keep her work secret from Nawara as it had to do with the official need to maintain her cover. "How are you going to explain it to him now?" Jyn asks; after Shani's stellar performance at the reception, Nawara is bound to have pretty pointed questions.

Shani's response is a barely suppressed sigh. "I'll have to tell him now, of course... on the positive side, it looks like he is now working for you people too, so he won't be able to hold it against me."

"No, I suppose not," Jyn admits; and they end up grinning at each other.

.

TBC

.

You may recall Mon Calamari ballet from _Revenge of the Sith_ ; the sombre if impressive spectacle during which Palpatine (still Senator) tells Anakin the Darth Plagueis story.

My idea for Jyn's dress and overall appearance at the second reception was something like Audrey Hepburn in her iconic _Breakfast at Tiffany's_ mode, _sans_ pearls but with a bit of sparkle to her dress. As for Shani, I saw her here as something _a la_ Jessica Rabbit but in a slinky gold dress instead of an orangey-red one.

Back when I was writing _Against the Odds_ , I wrote Shani at face value, as the quintessential trophy wife, if a pretty smart one. Then when I decided to write this one, her outward character became the perfect cover for a top-notch secret agent true identity. In this, I was partly inspired by an old favourite, namely, True Lies (yes, a Schwarzenegger flick!) where Arnie's character, a suave superspy, convincingly impersonates a boring computer salesman to his wife and daughter until the proverbial hits the fan ;)

I am now halfway through the plot, and as you may imagine, the reprieve they got here, while welcome, is temporary ;) I will aim to put up the next chapter sometime during the week, and the one after that, hopefully, next weekend.

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	10. intermission: supervisor assessment

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Notes

Ok, now that we are halfway into this, it is time for a change of PoV. What, didn't I mention that the second half will be told from an Imperial perspective?

…Just kidding. It is just this chapter. It is by far the shortest in the story, and when you are done reading it, you will be grateful for the brevity ;) Normal programming will resume at the monstrously long and ominously numbered Chapter 11, up in a few minutes. But seriously speaking, this chapter does mark a change of tone, and a turn of the plot, in a darker direction, at least for a while. I love these guys to bits but I can't let them have it too easy.

.

Major Frin Merkon is a diligent man. Unexceptional, perhaps, and unassuming; but loyal and dedicated and yes, diligent.

And fair, he reminds himself, as he ponders the appraisal form onscreen.

He has to do it for all his subordinates, every month; but since generally little changes in their patterns of behaviour – the exemplary performers continue striving for excellence, the less capable ones continue lagging behind – after the first few months, the exercise becomes repetitive for any given subordinate, a mechanical process of reapplying the same rating scores and supplying the same comments.

This month, however, he has a new appraisal subject, and must once again focus his mental faculties on the task.

Captain Andor transferred to Coruscant with glowing references, and Merkon can well see why; compared to the rest of his staff, Andor is clearly in the top quartile performance-wise – and these officers, summoned to the most important duty station in the galaxy, are the best of the best. It is too early to tell, of course, if the Captain's success in his current position is just the effect of his recent appointment, trying harder in his new position; but he has the makings of a solid Imperial servant – and Major Merkon does not use these words lightly; to him, the word servant has no derogatory connotation; it is, in fact, a term of high praise.

For what is the Empire, if not the most comprehensive, efficient, and logically consistent form of political and social order; not merely invincible to its enemies but infallible in its own right? The fact that it has both developed such a powerful hold over thousands of worlds, and has amassed such formidable military might, over a relatively brief time is a certain sign of its strength, a portent of its future longevity, and proof of the fundamental righteousness of its premise, besides testifying to the Emperor's indisputable genius.

This profound truth should be obvious to all; and Merkon cannot tolerate, let alone understand, the rogue elements who persist in their vain and misguided attempts to tarnish and disrupt the orderly dispatch of Imperial governance. Many of those are non-human; it is not surprising that inferior species should fail to grasp its underlying immaculate rationality; but the despicable reality is that there are also plenty of humans among them. Can't they see that without the shining beacon of the Empire's wise authority, the galaxy will once again be plunged into the chaotic darkness that was the disgraced Republic?

To the Major, anyone who opposes the Empire is either a blind fool or a dangerous anarchist, and has no right to breathe; and if he can help discover and eliminate these poisonous rebels, he will attain the supreme satisfaction of having not merely maintained, but further strengthened the Empire's authority, making sure that its rule is not only effectively enforced today, but goes on forever. Until then, until the lesser minds understand the superiority of the present order and voluntarily submit to it, they must, if need be, be governed by intimidation and suppression. All means are justified in pursuit of the greater good, especially when the ultimate goal is as grand as the establishment of galaxy-wide Imperial domination.

And he is fortunate that not only his esteemed superiors, but his peers and subordinates think the same. The same Captain Andor, for one; what insights Merkon has gleaned by observing the Captain's work and through the judicious expedient of discreet surveillance have convinced him that his newest subordinate is fully committed to furthering the Empire's lofty ideals and, importantly, has quickly recognized the Major's merits as a wise, intelligent, prudent and perceptive leader, not to mention his value as a role model.

That said, the Major is a humble man, even if he is to say so himself. He strives to be seen, known and defined above all as a man of order, an integral component within the system, a tiny bit useful brick in the enormous foundations of the shining edifice that is the Empire, who would be worthless by himself, but performs his prescribed function and fulfils his life's ultimate purpose by doing his part in upholding the Empire's rule. He cannot expect to be individually recognized or remembered in his endeavours, but if his modest contribution helps buttress the foundations of that grand edifice, starting with meeting and exceeding the expectations of his immediate and higher-up superiors, his humble life will not have been lived in vain.

But he should not dwell on himself; Captain Andor's appraisal form will not fill itself out on its own.

It takes Merkon a couple of minutes to list a brief summary of the Captain's recent assignments, after which his next challenge is to rate his newest subordinate's performance under five headings. He has, by now, repeated the process for various officers thousands of times, and yet this is one of the very few facets of his service that he occasionally questions.

 _Compliance with orders_

 _Precision_

 _Timeliness and efficiency_

 _Competence_

 _Ideological purity_

It is not Merkon's place to question his superiors' decisions; and yet he has wondered, on more than one occasion, why the core value of ideological purity was relegated to the back of the list. If his opinion were consulted on this important matter, he would have humbly suggested putting it first. Or rather, second, after compliance with orders; _that_ is the true core value underlying the Empire's enduring success… but it is almost as important to ascertain that the loyalty of Imperial officers to the ideals of galactic order is beyond reproach.

Captain Andor himself will not see his ratings; it is the Major's choice to verbally reward goo`d performance, and his paramount duty to point out weaknesses and shortfalls, but he owes it to himself and to the Empire to be fair; not too lenient, but consistent, also when comparing different officers' scores.

Merkon has never in his career rated anyone's performance, on any dimension, as a 10 out of 10. It is a philosophical impossibility; no one save the Emperor himself can be fully accomplished at their duties. It is generally safer to keep the scores close to mid-range values, so that any variations do not lead to radical adjustments, which are bound to raise questions from Merkon's superiors who examine these. In Andor's case, ratings of 6 or below would not be fair, so he settles on a mix of 7 and 8. In recognition of the Captain's propensity to keep the Empire's values in mind during his time out of office, he grants Andor an 8 on the crucial ideological purity score.

The remaining two fields, _strengths_ and _areas for corrective action_ , require both deep insight and careful wording; and while the Major is quite proficient at both, he must, once again, be particularly thorough when dealing with a new subject under his supervision. Miss an important weakness, and he can be blamed for any future mistakes committed by his subordinate.

In the case of Captain Andor, he can be reasonably safe in putting _respect for superiors_ as the most important strength. Certainly, the Captain has exhibited other strengths as well, but Merkon is, indeed, impressed with how quickly and how perceptively Andor has assessed Merkon's character and work.

The problem with listing his weaknesses is that none are immediately obvious; at least so far.

At least during duty hours at his duty station. In his free time, however…

While one of the Captain's commendable traits includes keeping the Empire in his thoughts at all times, he nonetheless combines this laudable attitude with a rather self-indulgent lifestyle outside of his line of duty. He has a wasteful tendency to pursue enjoyment in life, and is too indulgent toward his frivolous and unimportant wife, who is the biggest enabler of this unnecessary enjoyment, drawing her husband's attention away from focusing exclusively on his job, on the noble purposes of defending the Empire and serving his superiors; _those_ should be his principal sources of fulfilment and gratification, rather than ridiculous distractions like money-squandering dinners at fancy restaurants or pointless evening excursions, which use up time that could be better spent studying Imperial regulations and watching treasured footage of His Imperial Majesty's rare public appearances.

That woman is too willful and volatile, and appears to lack the docility, humility and profound devotion to the Empire's ideals that an officer's spouse should demonstrate, and unlike the Captain himself, only remembers about the Empire when it is convenient to justify her selfish wishes. And to make matters worse, they both appear to be sexually insatiable; surely after having been married for more than a few months, they should have exhausted their desires, or at least tempered their appetites. The Major wonders uneasily if the Captain and his wife are resorting to the use of illegal substances to keep up their stamina. It would be unfortunate to say the least, as drug use could mean a court martial for the Captain.

And yet, while the root of Captain Andor's potential shortcomings is crystal clear to him, Merkon struggles with the appropriate wording to express it. He cannot very well put _unreliable wife_ as an area for corrective action. _Excessive individuality_ is likewise a sub-optimal choice, not least because if that reveals itself to be the case, it can be very difficult to effectively correct.

Finally, a solution presents itself. _Tendency to get distracted_. Very accurate, coming to think of it. He will certainly need to caution the Captain about it.

Still, Merkon's previous line of thought lingers in his mind. There is something oddly appropriate about the notion of designating Jan Andor as an area for corrective action, after all. Her negative influence, after all, should be easy to eradicate. A convenient accident can be both easily arranged and impossible to investigate if staged with the help of a reprogrammed droid that itself can then be destroyed; and once free from that woman's influence, the Captain will be sure to redouble his duty efforts and maximise his focus on career matters. He may be upset for a while, but may be prompted to make a wiser choice for his next spouse, and ultimately may thank the stars for the timely intervention that guided him toward greater dedication in his service to the Empire.

The Captain is right, after all; Major Merkon is a wise and insightful leader.

.

TBC

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	11. the timebomb

.

 _System reboot in 26 seconds… 25… 24… 23…_

The numbers in the onscreen countdown message keep dwindling down, and Jyn has to forcibly relax her hands, which seem to ball into fists on their own accord. The screen she is watching transmits data through a remote hookup that she and Nairi patched together, but it does not make the wait any less anxious. The real action is happening half a dozen blocks away, on the top floor of Nairi's weather lab on campus where she has just triggered a minor system crash as a cover for switching the original relay with their rigged replica, having smuggled it in as a cargo pallet carrying a new storage cabinet to replace one that, apparently, suddenly collapsed. If anyone were to question her actions, she explained, she could truthfully argue that it would have taken ages to order a replacement using standard procedure, causing her to take matters into her own hands. As for the crash, it might be attributed to the consequences of a power surge from a recent lightning strike.

 _8… 7… 6…_

Jyn realises when she starts feeling dizzy that she is literally holding her breath. If anything goes wrong, they may not have a second chance.

 _2… 1… 0_

The lines of diagnostics code scroll up the screen in a rapid black-and-white blizzard, but it is only about half a minute later, when these are replaced by the Industrial Automaton startup logo and, finally, by the weather station data dashboard, that Jyn draws a deep breath and slowly exhales it, her shoulders sagging in relief.

They did it.

xxx

"Going well so far, isn't it?" Nairi takes a quick look over Jyn's shoulder at the replica screen. She watched the readouts in the lab for the initial half hour or so while she hurriedly stuffed parts of the old relay into the repulsorlift pallet shell before driving it off campus, and into the safehouse.

"Looks good to me." Jyn, who has been glued to the screen all this time, has been watching anxiously for glitches but has seen none.

"Great. I guess we've done our job," Nairi concludes with a hint of a grin. "Now we need to break this apart into the smallest and least recognizable bits we can manage," she adds, indicating the wreckage of the original relay, "and schedule a maintenance droid pickup a couple of blocks away to have them taken to the nearest recycling smelter. And then we can send a test message to our mutual friends."

"Sounds like a plan." Jyn pulls up a toolbox and grabs a couple of laser cutters, handing one to Nairi. She cannot wait to be done with the destroying the relay part so they can get to the message part.

Before they left the _Home One_ , they agreed that once everything was in place, when they knew the date and time of the upcoming relay switch, they would signal for Headquarters to send a freighter carrying a squadron of Alliance-owned TIE fighters, piloted by their Rogue Squadron comrades, to do a fly-by of the six orbital weather stations on that date to check that they correctly transmitted the encrypted intelligence data messages when queried by the right passcodes. The next step will be for a pair of light apparently-civilian spacecraft to send the Alliance HQ response to them via these same stations using established protocol; and from that point on, for so long as it is needed, this routine will be followed daily, with automated drone ships replacing live pilots after the first few rounds, shuttling back and forth in a random pattern between Coruscant's orbit and the nearby Ralltiir system, a busy trade crossroads from where they can safely transmit the information they collect to the Alliance. That way, any informants the Alliance may recruit on Coruscant will be able to send data to it directly, right under the Empire's nose.

But before any of that happens, they have a heap of hardware to reduce to shreds.

"Has your ambassador friend left?" Nairi asks her as they set about their task.

"They got out yesterday, yes."

" _They?_ " She raises a quizzical eyebrow at Jyn.

"Didn't have time to tell you. His wife flew in and joined us at the closing reception. Actually, she was the one who got the pallet out of the spaceport without anyone suspecting."

"How did she manage that?"

Jyn smiles and shakes her head before answering. "She knew how to charm the right people." To Nairi's incredulous look, she adds: "She's really amazing… and I never knew it until now, but she's one of us."

"One of us meaning..?"

"We all work for the same people. Her Alliance handler, for that matter, is the same as yours."

Nairi's incredulity gives way to a laugh. "I guess there are more of us than we even know."

Jyn grins back at her. "Looks like you're right. And thanks to the Empire, there'll be more of us every day," she adds, in a darker tone. What with the Empire's widespread cruelty and condoning injustice committed by its supporters, it is no wonder the Rebellion is making advances. If Jyn's parents had lived, she may never have become a Rebel. If Alderaan had not been annihilated, Nairi would have remained a law-abiding citizen, as would many fellow expatriate Alderaanians. If Shani's sisters had survived and remained free, she may have remained a happy housewife. "For everyone they kill, there will be someone else to join the cause."

"Yeah, you could say that again." Nairi's scowl is an eloquent sign that her thoughts mirror Jyn's. "Does her husband know?"

"He does now. She managed to keep it secret for almost twenty years, but she had to tell him after this stint, and from what Cassian told me, they looked very pleased with themselves when they were leaving." It did not hurt, of course, that Nawara managed to poach a senior banker for his Dorvalla endeavour – apparently, the fat human who had been chatting to him at the reception was more important than Jyn had thought.

"I guess it leaves some hope for Dave and me," Nairi says wistfully. "What about you two?" She looks up at Jyn. "When are you two getting out?"

Jyn hesitates. She was so caught up in the matter of getting the relay, and getting it to work, that she did not give much thought to their eventual departure. But now that she and Cassian have successfully completed the respective parts of their mission, there is nothing keeping them on Coruscant. And, absurdly, it almost seems a bit too soon. _Almost_.

"We need to send a message to the Alliance to arrange fake Imperial transfer orders for Cassian. That way we can leave on a scheduled transport as bona fide Imperials."

"Well, what better way to test our new relay?"

"Yep, makes perfect sense." Even to her own ears, Jyn's response is notably lacking in enthusiasm.

Sure enough, Nairi picks upon it. "If you're worried it may not work, I'm still going to fly up in two days' time for a regular maintenance trip, I can duplicate the message – "

"No, it's not that. I know it sounds stupid, but I'm kind of, almost, sorry to leave…" Jyn feels embarrassed the moment she says it.

"Don't be." Nairi's tone is suddenly forceful, and Jyn expects the other girl to berate her for having taken a liking to the comforts of the Imperial Center, but when Nairi continues, it is clear that she means it differently. "I know it must be a reprieve for you guys to live in a city like this, I imagine you spend most of your time on capital ships…" When Jyn nods, she goes on, "but believe me, you've seen the best of it, even if you've been to the slums. There is so much ugliness here that isn't visible to the naked eye. When you've only lived here for a short time it doesn't hit you, but the longer you stay, the more obvious it becomes, so in the end you can't see past it. This pervasive fear and distrust and contempt towards non-humans and non-Imperials that they cultivate…" She shakes her head in disgust. "Believe me, you're better off with the Alliance fleet where you are surrounded by friends and can look at your enemies through a targeting scope."

She sounds so bitter saying it that Jyn is once again embarrassed, this time of her relative naïvete. For all the constant precautions they have had to take, their spy games still had a frisson of excitement to them; but only, she has to admit, because they knew they would be back with the Alliance in a matter of days or, at most, weeks. And she is sorry for Nairi who has to stay and pretend to be part of the system she resents. "Why don't you come with us?" Jyn offers. "We can ask HQ to give you a cover story that will take you offworld, and we can leave together. There's no need for you to stay now that the relay is in place – "

Nairi shakes her head for an answer before Jyn has finished, but does not speak at once. "No," she says finally. "I can't. I'd _like_ to," she goes on, "and thank you for suggesting it, but I… can't leave Davin like this. I know you're thinking he's an Imperial and all, but I- we really do care about each other. I can't ask him to come with us, but I can't – I don't want to leave him."

"I understand," Jyn says. She did not expect to say it, but for a single instant, she thought of what she would say if someone tried to persuade her to leave without Cassian; and she immediately knew what Nairi meant. "Well," she continues in an attempt to lighten the mood, "at the very least, we should all go out for dinner together before we leave. The four of us, like Davin suggested."

Nairi looks up at her, her attempt at a smile is not entirely convincing, but she sounds a little more upbeat when she says Jyn's line back to her.

"Sounds like a plan."

xxx

 _1930 at the Corner?_

Cassian's message may look like an idle dinner invitation, but Jyn suspects that it is a case of deceptive appearances – perhaps deliberately so. The fact that he is asking for a relatively early meeting time, so he will be going there straight from the Palace office, could, in principle, mean that he wants to share good news without having to go through complicated charades at their apartment; but she suspects that with their recent success, they may have exhausted their good news quota for the time being.

Sure enough, when she gets to _The Abregado Corner_ via a circuitous route, having left the speeder three blocks away, and carrying the bug sweeper-equipped datapad just in case, Cassian's expression confirms her suspicions.

"What's wrong?" she asks when they are seated and certain of not being monitored.

He shakes his head. "No, it's… it's not something that's _happened_ , it's something I _found_."

"What?"

For once, he looks uneasy. "I… you know, I think it would be better if we quickly grab something to eat here and then go look at it somewhere else."

 _Look at it_? So presumably, he was able to copy whatever information he has found. "You have it with you?"

He nods for an answer.

She ponders their options. The apartment is too much hassle; if they need time to look at files they will probably do it in silence, and will have to pretend they fell asleep at a ridiculously early hour as they keep up the tedious process of writing and deleting their conversation onscreen instead of talking. A public space, or an open space like a terrace, could be good for a quiet talk, but not for studying a document. The only fully acceptable option is risky in its own right, for a different reason, but it may still be the best under the circumstances.

"We could go to our study room, you know." Meaning the safehouse. "We can get a rental swoop nearby and then come back to where I left the speeder."

He is surprisingly quick to agree. "Let's do it. We can ask for a takeaway instead of eating here. What did you want to get?"

xxx

"What is it?" she asks him once she has powered up the safehouse computer, when he hands her the datacard.

"I'm not completely sure, but it looks pretty bad." He still looks as if he got a beating. "I had to do a background check on an Onderon delegation arriving next week for trade talks, and Merkon arranged a read-only access passcode that let me access this database kept by Imperial Intel. There was no way to copy the files, but I was able to save images."

She opens the first of the two dozen image files, it looks like a screenshot of a database entry for one of the Onderonian delegation members. Name, age, official ID number, residential address, last known actual residence and recent movements, contact details, family members with their respective ages and IDs, and extensive annotations below listing what looks to be chronological evidence of the Onderonian's anti-Imperial sentiments.

 _Objected to Imperial requisition of a plot of industrial-purpose land formerly in his possession on 7141._

 _Signed a petition to the Governor of Onderon for leniency toward minors apprehended defacing Imperial property on 7370._

 _Participated in a demonstration against "Imperial violence" on 7604_.

 _Wrote a letter to the local news outlet advocating against the elimination of rebel factions active in the Inner Rim sector in favour of negotiations on 7713._

And, below this damning evidence, a chilling verdict.

 _Alliance Intelligence assessment: Subject shows resilience and persists in subversive thinking._

 _Suggested course of action: subject to be detained no later than 7900 and transported for processing at LSK, batch 37._

She looks through the rest of the files; they are all database entries following the same format. Mon Calamari, Bothans, humans, Selonians, a Gand, and several other species; all accused of similar transgressions, all destined for detention over the coming two or three months, followed by "processing" at the cryptic LSK. The last image is of a query page, listing the detestable resource as the _Imperial Intelligence Political Allegiance, Integrity and Reliability assessment tool_ ; Jyn's breath falters when she sees the total number of searchable entries.

 _1 871 952_

"What in blazes is LSK?"

"Lusankya."

 _Of course._

She was too nauseated from reading the files to immediately make the connection, but with Imperial Intel apparently in charge of this nightmarish practice, what else could it mean but the top-secret prison for political detainees and captured Rebels? That place's reputation for horrifying cruelty is matched only by the utmost secrecy surrounding its location, as befits the pet project of one Ysanne Isard, daughter of the late – most agree, dead by her hand – Internal Security Director, who has used her father's demise as a springboard to the Emperor's inner circle and to her present position at the helm of Imperial Intelligence. Many believe that she has her sights on even greater things, possibly even replacing Palpatine some day… which explains her extreme obsession with secrecy while, as suspected, she is building her own empire within the Empire.

And now she looks to be single-handedly masterminding the Empire's dirty work of eliminating dissenters; not content with waging open war against the Alliance, the Empire is clearly in the middle of a large-scale internal purge.

No wonder Cassian looked so crushed when she saw him earlier.

"We can't…" For an instant, Jyn's voice fails her. "We have to do something about it."

Cassian nods, but does not speak right away. "The question is _how_. I was only given read-only access, and even that under tight supervision. All I managed to do was get these screenshots. For us to try to warn all the suspects we'd need to have a complete set of these, and I'd never be able to get them."

Not to mention, it would take forever to get nearly two million screenshots, and to contact as many beings across the galaxy; there is no way they could save them, or even the majority, on time. It would have helped speed things up if they could make a full copy, but with Imperial Intel's paranoia, the database is bound to be protected by impenetrable firewalls.

And since no one except Isard and a handful of her closest confidants apparently knows where Lusankya _is_ , they have no chance of sabotaging the prison itself and freeing the captives.

And no prison, no matter how big, can hold two million inmates, which means that "processing", more likely than not, implies execution. And as these suspects are being dealt with, surely new ones will be added in their place.

Which leaves one possible option that is marginally less impracticable than the others.

"We need to find a way to get admin access."

Not surprisingly, Cassian has been thinking along the same lines. "I know who the Imp Intel liaison in my unit is, but there's no way to tell if he has the required level of authorization. Even assuming I could somehow get to use his access credentials."

For a moment Jyn is uncertain whether he says it to mean there is nothing they can do; but his next words fly in the face of any such doubt.

"I guess you need to ask your friend tomorrow to send a message to HQ and tell them to send us all they know about it."

xxx

"Well, on the upside, now we know for sure that it works."

Nairi's remark is delivered in an incongruously dejected tone, considering that they have just received definitive proof, in the form of an acknowledgement from Alliance HQ, that the relay transmission chain is fully functional.

Then again, with the screenshots Jyn has just shown her, it is no wonder she sounds downbeat.

"And it _is_ a good thing, as we need intel from our guys asap." Jyn's own weak attempt at a pep talk is undermined by her own deep frown.

"You think we can pull it off?"

"We have to," Jyn insists. "And if anyone can get it done, it's Cassian." What with his two years at Carida, and the countless undercover missions, and his month of unimpeachable Imperial service now; and all the nearly impossible espionage achievements he has to show for it all. "So long as our colleagues at Headquarters help point us in the right direction, we're un business."

"OK, now's your chance," Nairi prompts her as she gets up from the terminal, now displaying a blank message screen. "Better if you do it, seeing how you want to write directly to your boss."

"Most likely he won't be the one answering it," Jyn mutters as she sits down and puts General Airen Cracken as the principal addressee. "But this way it is more likely to be seen and read with minimal delay." Which is especially important considering that right now, the members of Alliance Command are likely to have their hands busy preparing to ambush the Emperor as per their earlier intel, she figures.

Two minutes later, her missive is ready for dispatch.

 _Priority: urgent_

 _Subject: mission authorization / information request_

 _We have uncovered factual evidence of a large-scale Imperial effort to eliminate internal dissenters. The target list is kept in a database managed by Imperial Intelligence, currently numbering circa 2 000 000 entries. The targets are scheduled to be apprehended and transported to the Lusankya facility for processing, presumed to signify execution, in the next 100 days (see attached image files for a sample we were able to obtain)._

 _We hereby request authorization to sabotage the above effort._

 _In order to maximise the chances of mission success we need all available information on the following:_

 _List of Imperial Intelligence liaisons working in or interacting with the Diplomatic Service Protocol unit headed by Maj. Merkon that have full admin access rights to the Imperial Intelligence Political Allegiance, Integrity and Reliability assessment database_

 _All available data on the database access protocol and related restrictions_

 _Any available data on access credentials_

 _Captain Jyn Andor_

 _Colonel Cassian Andor_

 _Nairi Panteer_

Jyn reads through her text again; there is a faint whiff of desperation conjured up by her repeated references to _any_ and _all available data_ , but on second thoughts, it may be a good thing; the situation is indeed critical, and this is a less blunt, but no less obvious way of conveying it than saying _you'd better give us all you have and hurry the hell up_.

"What do you think?" she prompts Nairi, who has been following the progress of her message onscreen.

"Looks like you've got it all in here," the other girl replies. "There's one detail that is…" her face darkens, "imprecise, but it is not relevant."

Jyn makes an effort not to bristle at the implied criticism.

"What? You mean that there are fewer than two million targets? They'll see the exact figure in the query screenshot, anyway, and the worst thing is, they can, and sure will, add new ones over time-"

"No, it's not that," Nairi interrupts her, her voice suddenly quiet. "When you say "processing" means execution, it is factually correct in the sense that they are supposed to be killed. It's just that they won't be killed outright."

"First thing Isard's goons do to anyone brought into Lusankya, they torture them," she goes on. "Those who resist eventually die, or are executed if they physically or mentally collapse into an unresponsive state. Those who break are tortured again until they reveal the maximum of information that is of use to the Empire. Earlier on, when Isard had just become the head of Imp Intel, she experimented with… programming some of these prisoners and releasing them, or letting them escape, so that they would go back to their lives and families but become sleeper agents, able to reveal any new information or commit acts of violence when triggered. It wasn't very effective in the end, as very few were able to withstand what she put them through and go back to any semblance of normal life afterwards. Most of those she experimented on ended up killing themselves, or turning to drugs, or going insane. That's how the rest of it became known, because a couple of former prisoners became delirious and started talking. It seems that her practice now is to execute the ones who break as well, once they have outlived their peak usefulness. But their families are kept in fear and hope and heartbreak thinking they could see their loved ones again."

Nairi delivers this nightmarish monologue in a quiet, level voice, sounding almost mechanical; but it does not make the horror any less crushing or chilling.

"They did it with a few faculty members at the University who were seen as opinion leaders and who spoke up repeatedly against Imperial oppression. I never saw any of them again, but one of those… escapees… mentioned seeing two of them in a near-vegetative state at Lusankya."

Jyn remembers Nairi's ominous words about the ugliness beneath Coruscant's shiny surface, and about the good fortune of being able to confront the Empire in open warfare. "I see what you meant the other day. But mark my words, one of these days, not now, but soon, we'll bring the rebellion here and take this place away from the Empire. And we'll find this Lusankya wherever it is, and free everyone in it, and then blow it to bits."

And in this moment at least, she believes it.

xxx

"What does it say?"

Jyn and Nairi are back at the safehouse early the following morning; and on the upside, the Alliance message is waiting for them as they sit down side by side to read it.

 _You are authorized to proceed with the plan._ \

"Like there was any doubt," Jyn mutters. The part she leaves unsaid is that in the highly unlikely event that they had not been given the go-ahead, they would have done all they could to accomplish their new goal regardless, by any means available.

 _According to our sources, admin access to the ImPAIR database can only be effected from the data stations assigned to subjects with the respective admin access rights. Initial access to these data stations is verified by palm print._

" _Sith,"_ the two of them say in unison. This means that even if Cassian were somehow to get the access credentials to type in, he would still have no chance of powering up an admin data station on his own.

 _Admin access to the database is effected via passkey. The key is a physical device that randomly generates and displays a 10-character numeric code that changes every 10 seconds and is synchronized to the database verification module._

 _The key is specific to the data station. It is the only additional form of authorization required for admin access to the database if the user is already logged in._

"At least that's good," Nairi remarks wryly, and Jyn nods; it means there is no need for a palm print if Cassian can sneak in while the Intel officer steps away, so long as the data station is still powered on. Assuming that he also manages to steal the passkey, that is.

 _Our data show the following Imperial Intelligence liaison within the Imperial Palace Diplomatic Service Protocol unit having the required admin access rights:_

 _Lieutenant Umak Drysso, data station location SSW21/4B/168, user number 0027438017_

Hopefully, it is the same liaison officer Cassian was talking about the other day.

 _Report on any material developments. Upon mission completion, follow agreed-upon procedure for extraction._

The _agreed-upon procedure_ being a message to Alliance HQ signalling for them to create fake reassignment orders for Cassian; this was to be expected, but Jyn bites down on a wry smirk at the inherent optimism. Strictly speaking it should be _in case of_ mission completion, not _upon_.

"See, he did answer you personally," Nairi observes, seeing how the message is signed simply, _Airen Cracken._

"Sometimes it's good to be wrong," Jyn replies with a hint of a grin. In truth she is glad to see that Cracken took the time to do it. "So what do we do now?"

"We get to work." Nairi's tone implies that it is self-evident, but they are yet to decide what exactly they will be working on.

"I take it you plan to write a virus," Jyn ventures.

"Sure."

"To delete all the data?"

Unexpectedly, Nairi hesitates. "No… I'd write one to _replace_ them." She continues, growing more animated in the process: "I can write a data refresh command in a way that will go in a continuous chain, so instead of refreshing one entry it will pull data for all entries from a designated source, replacing them one by one. It won't stop until it's done and all these citizens' details have been overwritten. Compared to just deleting data, it has better chances of remaining undetectable long enough for the code to work through all of it. It will only need a few hours, anyway, but the added upside is, it will also overwrite whatever backup they may have."

"What do we use to replace the data?" Presumably, it will take forever to create two million fake entries that will look remotely plausible even upon a cursory random check, as would happen if an Imperial happened to make a query mid-process and feel compelled to raise an alarm.

"Entries from a similar-sized database that will hopefully have a similar structure," Nairi explains. "So our first task will be to look for one. I can tweak the code to account for empty fields, but I'll need to see exactly how the data field sequence is arranged to correctly align them. As a minimum we need something that starts with a name, age, official ID, and some kind of location marker."

"But then… anyone whose data we may use will end up in Lusankya," Jyn reminds her.

"Not if we choose our source well," Nairi points out cryptically. "Let's take a look around for relatively low-security Imperial databases to see if we can break into, say, an Imperial Security planetary roster… or better yet," she goes on with a wicked twinkle in her eye, "a galactic listing of active Imperial administrators, Empire-appointed governors and mayors and such. It's sure to be accessible from an Intel liaison's data station in the Palace so I can safely write a virus that will use it as a source. They won't kill _those_ ," she explains, coming back to Jyn's question, "even if they end up getting arrested and get a big scare for a few days. But the confusion it's bound to create will give the Alliance a priceless advantage."

On hearing this, Jyn shakes her head in admiration of the plan's devastating elegance.

"You're a genius, you know."

Nairi looks at her, and actually smiles for the first time in two days. "No. I'm just a weather scientist with a bit of a grudge against the Empire."

xxx

"Hello darling," Jyn drawls over her "official" comlink; Cassian carries a clean one as an emergency option, but she has to call his "official" one during work hours, and thus it makes no sense for her to be calling from a clean one, either. "Am I disturbing you?"

"No, I have a minute," Cassian replies in a purposely neutral tone; he cannot be seen to be overly enthusiastic about distractions while at work, even if he is happy to hear her.

"I just wanted to suggest that we have dinner at the same place we went to two days ago. I really liked the food." Hopefully, Cassian will get her real meaning; they got their food at _The Abregado Corner_ , but they actually had dinner at the safehouse.

"Sure." His quick and confident answer suggests that he knows exactly what she is talking about. "I'll go there right after my shift. See you there."

"See you," she coos into the comlink, and turns to Nairi once she has switched it off. "He should be here in about an hour, allowing for time to cover his tracks." They agreed earlier that instead of Jyn retelling Cracken's message to Cassian, it would be much easier if he joined them to read it firsthand. "I guess we'd better really get some food in here."

Regardless of Cassian, they are both starving, after spending the entire day looking for, and trying to break into, an assortment of Imperial databases. The one they successfully hacked so far, a listing of stormtroopers stationed in the Core Worlds, is not the best option, but may have to do in a worst-case scenario. They are much more hopeful about another database they came across in Imperial administrative archives, which looks very much like the detailed directory of Imperial governors and mayors that Nairi was hoping to get, but it looks like cracking it may take longer; they can only hope to do it before Cassian gets a shot at the Intel liaison's duty station.

"I'll go get something," Nairi volunteers. "I know the best joints around here."

xxx

"The famous Cassian Andor," Nairi says with a sly grin after Jyn has made the introductions. "I'm honoured."

Cassian, on the other hand, looks acutely embarrassed, and shoots an accusing glance at Jyn for, presumably, having represented him as some kind of celebrity. All the while, Nairi looks to be having fun watching them.

"All I did was accidentally mention Scarif. She figured out the rest," Jyn mutters.

By now, it looks like Cassian has remembered the suave diplomatic self he has cultivated in his more recent assignments. "All that is ancient history, anyway. You, on the other hand, have been the most important operative for getting this to work," he tips his head at the monitor remotely hooked up to the comm relay. "So it is I who should be addressing you as _the famous Nairi Panteer_."

"I couldn't have done it without Jyn's help," she argues. "And yours, and that of your Twi'lek ambassador friend and his wife. Compared to working on my own here for years, this has been so much better."

"Hopefully, though," Jyn points out, "the bit of info you sent on last week will go a long way to putting us all out of business, at least as spies and such." The Alliance killing Palpatine may not mean immediate victory, but it has a good chance of dealing the Empire the decisive blow. That way Nairi can get to do what she really wanted, and become famous as an AI scientist.

"But for now we still have this ImPAIR thing to mess up between the three of us," Nairi reminds her.

"We got Cracken's response this morning," Jyn tells Cassian. "We're on, and he sent a pretty useful situation summary. You'd better take a look."

"Yep, that's the one," Cassian concludes, after seeing the Intel officer's name toward the end of the message. "Good thing he has the passkey."

"Is he easy to get around?" Jyn ventures.

"Not that easy, but on the positive side, his office with the data station is two doors down from mine. So it's easy to see whenever he gets out. The only catch is, I may never be certain as to when he may be getting back in. How long do you think it will take to upload the code?" This latter part is addressed to Nairi.

"We haven't got around to writing it yet," she begins. Not surprising, considering that they only just got started earlier this same day. "But I'd say it shouldn't take longer than three to four minutes. Once it's launched it will run automatically, and take a few hours for a full overwrite. We decided to overwrite rather than delete the data to minimize the risk of detection," she explains for Cassian's benefit, and Jyn notices his approving nod. Wait until you hear what we're going to replace it _with_ , she thinks; she is certain Cassian will appreciate their – Nairi's – creative idea. "But the only time when you will have to be present, and risk detection, is during the first three to four minutes when you upload and launch it. And of course you should remember to take out and destroy the datacard. But I shouldn't be telling you this," she finishes with a smirk.

"It never hurts to be reminded," he counters. "Sounds feasible, so long as I can be certain Drysso will be out for five minutes or more, and no one sees me get in."

"What if someone sees you get _out_?" Jyn asks.

"That's easy. I'll just say I was looking for him and didn't know he'd stepped out of his office."

Makes sense.

"And while the two of you work on the code, I'll keep an eye on his routine. I didn't have reason to watch him too closely but with any luck, I may see a pattern."

"Before I forget," Nairi puts in, "now that I've got both of you here, maybe I should get your palm prints."

"You think you can switch Drysso's print for mine so I could get to his station after hours?" Cassian asks, somewhat incredulously. It would be too much to hope for, and Nairi's answer confirms it.

"No, it wouldn't work. There's no way I can access Palace data stations with all the firewalls. Plus in any case, it's impossible to associate more than one print to a single user ID for obvious reasons. The reason I was thinking of getting them," she continues, "is to add the two of you as authorized visitors to my apartment, so that if either of you should need a place to run to and can't get to a safehouse, you can get in there."

"What about your fiancé?" Cassian asks. "Won't he be jealous?"

Nairi shakes her head. "No, I've been telling him about the two of you…" Seeing Cassian's confusion, she explains, "as an upstanding Imperial couple, so he won't be suspicious. As a matter of fact he was suggesting that the four of us have dinner together, so I can just tell him we're going to have it at our house."

"Sounds good," Jyn says, and hopes that they really get to have that dinner when they are done with this latest challenge; and hopes even more that neither she nor Cassian end up having to use that access right for the other potential reason.

xxx

"You all right?"

"Yeah," he answers absently, but it is obvious to Jyn he is anything but. Now, a week after their meeting with Nairi, she has been noticing how quiet and thoughtful Cassian has become recently. It can't be because of any shortcoming on their part of the plan; by now she and Nairi have successfully hacked the Imperial administrative officials' directory, written and compiled the virus code, and are now in the final stages of testing – for the past two days they have been running simulations, using the virus to copy directory data into a mock-up of their target ImPAIR database, too well aware that there will be zero margin of error in reality. Assuming, of course, that Cassian manages to get the passkey and sneak into Drysso's office.

No; his recent gloomy mood must have a different reason. Normally Jyn does not press him for answers to this kind of question, knowing self-reliance and reticence to be long-established habits, and knowing that he will eventually tell her on his own accord; but this time, with the stakes as high as they are, she does not have the luxury of waiting.

"I was thinking maybe we could go to a ride," she begins tentatively; and to her mild surprise, he eagerly agrees.

"Great idea. I was just thinking about the same thing."

They take the airspeeder, in silence, to the main entrance of the same office block where they took Nawara to show him the Palace panorama – and to discuss their tactical situation in private – and once again, take the lobby turbolift to the rooftop terrace, as deserted now as it was then. Still, Jyn runs the surveillance sweep on the datapad and only relaxes when it comes up clean.

She is slightly surprised when Cassian is the first to speak, but then, his opening remark is a question about her and Nairi's progress.

Maybe he _is_ worried about their end of the plan, after all.

"We're practically done," she reassures him. "Nairi said she wanted to do a final simulation run tomorrow, and then I'll go pick up a copy on a datacard and bring it so you can take it with you the day after." It is risky, of course, for Cassian to be carrying it around, but they have no choice.

He nods but says nothing, and then silence reigns again, accented only by the hum of airspeeders flying by several floors below.

Clearly, if Jyn does not take the initiative, they may be staying here well past midnight.

"What's the matter?" she asks. "I can see something's bothering you. What is it?"

He takes a few seconds to answer.

"I've been thinking," he starts quietly, "maybe the two of us should break up."

His voice may be quiet, but his words hit her with the force of the most deafening Coruscant thunderclap.

"Why?!" is all she can manage.

For a second he stares at her in confusion – completely irrational, in Jyn's view – and then he shakes his head a fraction.

"No… I didn't mean it like that. I meant we should pretend to break up for public benefit, as it were." Now that he has got past this point and has met no objection from Jyn – in truth, she is still too shocked to answer - he goes on in a steadier voice. "You could make a show of moving out of the apartment, go to Nairi's or to a hotel or rent another place."

"Why?" is all she can say, again. It actually really hurts to hear him say these things.

"That way if they catch me, you won't be under suspicion. Otherwise you may become a fellow suspect. Or worse, a fellow convict." _Or a second corpse_. The part he left unsaid is nonetheless crystal clear. "And if you move to a place they can't track you to, you can stay safe even if they do suspect you."

None of which convinces her one single bit that his absurd reasoning has a milligram of sense in it, or makes her any less furious. Or any less hurt.

"I'm not doing this," she says bluntly.

"What if I get caught? If they have the slightest suspicion of my real allegiance, and it's very likely that they will if they catch me uploading the code, it will be a direct trip to Lusankya." A direct _one-way_ trip; once again, the part he leaves unsaid rings out the loudest.

"I'm not leaving without you. I can't believe you were seriously considering breaking up with me," she adds, unable to keep it to herself.

"I wasn't _seriously_ suggesting it. Well, I _was_ , but you know _why_ I suggested it, I told you."

"I heard you _say_ why you suggested it." She still has a hard time dealing with it, even after hearing his reassurances.

It looks like Cassian may have finally realized what a heartless monster he was being, because he now looks kind of heartbroken; and she is happy to see it.

"You know I'd never really want to leave you," he argues, and takes a step toward her, only to see her take a step aside. "Jyn?"

She glances sideways at him but says nothing.

"Jyn, please..." She can finally hear anguish in his voice, and avoids looking at him again for fear of having her resolve crumble.

"I didn't- I know it came out all wrong, but I'd never in my life want to leave you, or want you to leave. I just want you to be safe, and I want you to get out if I get caught, and go back to the Alliance. If you stay here, it probably won't help me, and it can definitely get you in mortal danger." Seeing how his entreaties fail to convince her, he makes a final pitch. "Whatever happens, meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me. And whatever happens, it will have been worth it."

"What?" She is still angry, but cannot help the question.

"All of it," he answers, not very helpfully. "Every day, every moment we had together."

Still, she notes, in the past tense. As if they have really broken up.

As if he were dead already.

"Stop talking like this," she says; she wants to say more, but her throat is burning.

But now he seems desperate to confess all manner of things.

"I probably never told you but you really blew me away the first moment I met you on Yavin."

He did tell her, kind of, onboard Krennic's shuttle when they were jumping to Dorvalla, and he was under heavy medication and half-delirious. Admittedly he used different language back then, something about her being _a natural leader_ , but the general gist was there, sort of. The irony is, it had taken her a few days longer to fall for him; in that first meeting, standing in the shadows with a set expression, he had looked much older, not to mention much less approachable, than she discovered him to be.

"I saw you were special, not because you were Galen's daughter but because of who you were, yourself. The way you spoke, the way you carried yourself with Mon Mothma, with Draven, with me. I couldn't get you out of my mind after that meeting, even if wasn't happy to have you come along to Jedha. I've never been able to get you out of my mind since."

"Why weren't you happy?" She glances at him, and seeing him watch her face with a strange mixture of pain and fascination and, yes, love, she takes a step toward him; and he takes it as his cue to step right up to her and wrap her up in his arms.

"It was Draven's idea. Like you said back then, we were going into a war zone. I didn't want you to get killed. That's why I want you to leave now." She has her temple pressed against his jaw, her face against the side of his neck, and she feels the tension as he says it.

There is still no way in hell she is leaving, but she figures it is no use arguing.

"Why are you telling me all this now, when we've been married for four years?" she asks instead.

And while she is no longer angry, his next words still feel like a sharp blade against her heart.

"Better now than never."

She is too drained to protest, and can only hope, for once, that he is wrong.

.

TBC

.

Notes

Ysanne Isard is a canon EU character, very much as I described her here, and of a somewhat striking appearance that I had no need to go into. Lusankya, the top-secret prison facility, is indeed her pet project, and no one knows its location until it reveals itself, as it were. Also, Jan Dodonna, the Alliance general who ran the mission briefing for and commanded over the Battle of Yavin, ended up in it, but was ultimately freed. Isard gets her comeuppance, and the Alliance discovers Lusankya, but it only happens two years after this plot in the EU canon timeline, in the X-Wing series' final book, _The Bacta War._

By way of full disclosure, I do not know if it is technically possible to do what I have Jyn and Nairi do with the virus, but I'd like to think so ;)

I will aim to post the (much shorter) chapter 12 over the weekend.


	12. farewell

"Hi."

She almost jumps at hearing Cassian's voice on the comlink. In the month they have been here, he has never called her during the duty shift. The few time they talked within those hours, it was her that called him.

"Hi." She can think of nothing better than mirroring his greeting. She wonders for an instant if she should ask him what the matter was, but thinks twice about it; he is the one who has something to say, better leave his options open as to how he wants to pitch it.

Very simply, as it happens. "Can you call me on the other number?" Meaning the clean comlink. It is serious, then; they agreed from the start that they would use it only when absolutely inevitable.

"Sure. Give me five minutes, OK?" The time it will take her to get out of the apartment and into some reasonably shady alley.

"OK." If he is not happy about the delay, he does not show it.

When she does call him back, _three_ minutes later as it happens, the reason for his presumed impatience becomes abundantly clear; and his voice has lost all its superficial calm, urgent and tense, but with a tinge of excitement.

"Listen, there's not much time. I asked for an hour off to run an errand but the sooner I'm back the better. Drysso was called into an urgent meeting offsite and he ran off leaving his office door unlocked, and the key on his desk. I swiped it and rigged the data station sensor to prevent it from going into sleep mode but I need the datacard asap to do what we need. Do you have a copy on you?"

Her heart sinks. "No. Nairi's running the final simulation in the safehouse, I was going to go pick it up in the afternoon. I can go there now-"

"No," he interrupts her, "better if we meet directly," He is right, of course; by the time Jyn makes it to the safehouse and to wherever she and Cassian may agree to meet, and by the time he makes it back to the Palace, Drysso, in all likelihood, will have returned. "If she waits for me at the APZ I can be there in about twenty minutes max."

It makes sense for them to meet in the APZ notwithstanding its sleazy and dangerous reputation, even because of it; itr is less tightly policed, and its dark alleys and milling crowd of assorted beings will provide better cover for two alleged strangers to bump into each other. Jyn is still uneasy about it, but knows that there are not a lot of options.

"OK. I'll call her right away." It would have been simpler if she and Cassian talked directly, but it looks like Cassian will have to focus on making it to the meeting point unobserved, and carrying on a comlink conversation that he will need to concentrate on will distract his attention, to say nothing about attracting the attention of others. "I'll tell her to wait for you at a place called _The Quarren Dive_ , it's a sort of tapcafe." One of the shadier sort, sure, but also one, from what she has seen of APZ locales, of the best places for a clandestine encounter. "The address is on the corner of 3357 and 1494, level 32." Anything lower than this would be so disreputable as to be highly dangerous. "Got it?"

"Yeah. I'll be there in about fifteen minutes." Meaning that he is on his way already. "Talk to you later."

"OK." She wants to tell him to be careful, but there is no time, and hopefully he knows it anyway.

She terminates the call and calls Nairi's clean comlink number.

"Nairi?" She is relieved when the other girl picks up at once. "Hi, it's me. Listen, Cassian just called, he's on the way to the APZ, he needs the card asap to use it. The other guy's away at a meeting and Cassian got the key. How soon can you make it?"

"To where in the APZ?"

" _The Quarren Dive_."

"Ten minutes max. Slightly less if I really hurry."

"It's OK, he'll be there in fifteen. Listen, I'll come to the safehouse anyway in about half an hour." There is no way she can wait in the bugged apartment where she cannot even swear to counteract the stress of the wait. "I'll see you there. Take care," she adds; she had no chance to say it to Cassian but one out of two is better than none.

"You too." Jyn can hear from the background noise that Nairi is already out of the safehouse and powering up the swoop. "See you soon."

"OK," she says to a dead line, as she walks back toward their apartment building. There is no way she is taking the rigged speeder, but she ran out with nothing but the comlink and her Imperial ID – those are supposed to be carried at all times – and she wants, as a minimum, to take along her datapad and a couple of other things before finding a swoop to rent and ride to the safehouse. She wonders which of the two of them will get there first.

With any luck, Nairi will be there already by the time Jyn makes it; and Cassian will join them in a couple of hours.

xxx

Nairi is not there, and Jyn has to keep persuading herself not to worry. Ten minutes one way, twenty both ways; plus, say, five to meet with Cassian – she can hand him the card in a few seconds but they need to find each other first, and _The Quarren Dive_ tends to get crowded in the afternoon. Maybe she should have picked a less crowded place. No, that could make their meeting obvious, which is worse. Even if it takes them longer than five minutes, Cassian will be back to his office in under an hour from his first call, and assuming he called almost immediately after Drysso left, there is no plausible way that an Imperial meeting would run for less than a full hour. All Cassian needs is three to four minutes at the data station, she reminds herself. And if he and Nairi really have trouble finding each other, they both have clean comlinks.

Still, maybe she should go there and check.

No, they will never stop laughing at her afterwards for trying to babysit them.

If they both make it out of there, that is.

No.

She cannot allow herself to think like that.

It's only been half an hour.

Forty minutes.

An hour.

At that point she jumps up ready to go there regardless, but checks herself when it occurs to her that Nairi probably took a circuitous route back to the safehouse to shake off anyone attempting to follow her. Maybe she saw someone who was acting suspiciously, and wisely decided to be careful. And it would be pretty absurd if Jyn were to go off looking for Nairi as Nairi herself sat in the safehouse waiting for her.

An hour and a half later, she is out of excuses. She leaves her datapad and bag in the safehouse, taking only the clean comlink and ID, and a handful of credit chits, and rides her rented swoop to _The Quarren Dive_.

xxx

"Looking for someone, lady?"

The server droid's mechanical droning voice is really not well suited to its job, considering that waiters are supposed to at least appear welcoming.

"Yes. I was supposed to be meeting a friend here, but I don't see her."

"Can you describe her? I can cross-reference your description with my video receiver memory bank."

"How long back does your memory go?"

"The time we opened today, at 1200 standard."

Good enough.

"She should have come here about an hour and a half ago, she said she'd wait for me. Human, tall, slim build, dark hair, dark eyes, looks to be under 30 standard years old."

Something whirrs inside the droid's head as, presumably, it powers up the memory bank.

When it speaks to Jyn again, it is not al all what she expected.

"Perhaps we should speak to my supervisor."

She has trouble walking the couple of dozen steps to the back of the tapcafe; it seems as if the bones in her legs had liquefied in the meantime. When the droid approaches the supervisor – a tall rust-coloured Quarren, true to the name of the establishment – it displays an onscreen message for the Quarren's eyes, and for a terrifying few seconds, Jyn wonders if they are about to call Imperial security; of if they have just done so.

But when the Quarren speaks, his voice is low and unexpectedly – unsettlingly - sympathetic.

"Ess-Ay here tells me you are looking for a human female in her twenties who was supposed to have come here in the past two hours."

"Yes," she manages.

The Quarren's facial tentacles suddenly go limp.

"I regret to be giving you bad news, but it is highly probable that your friend has met with a terrible accident. A human female answering the description you gave to Ess-Ay came in here at 1620" – an hour and forty minutes ago, she calculates mechanically – "and left at 1625 accompanied by a human male."

Jyn is struggling to breathe, so she just nods, unable to beg the Quarren to proceed to spare her further torment.

"She was found dead in an abandoned warehouse at 3356." A block from here. "At approximately 1700."

Seeing her anguished face, the Quarren adds, very quietly, "I am sorry."

"Is it known how she died?"

The Quarren shakes his head.

"What about- " she still cannot confidently form words. "Is anything known about the male and what happened to him?"

The Quarren's tentacles quiver slightly as he shakes his head again. "No, I am afraid not."

"Thank you," Jyn breathes.

"If you need to sit down, you can stay here. Ess-Ay can bring you water free of charge."

"Just one cup… thank you," she says weakly. She should probably get out, but is still too unsteady on her legs, and needs at least a few minutes.

"I am sorry," the Quarren says again.

This time, she just nods.

xxx

She will never get to work on her dream AI projects, Jyn thinks. Or marry the man she loves.

 _Loved._

Or see their victory when they win it.

Because no matter how blindingly acute the pain is, Jyn is still certain about one thing.

They _will_ win that victory.

Like she said to Nairi ten days ago, _for everyone they kill, there will be someone else to join the cause_.

xxx

It takes her the better part of an hour to travel the half-hour route from the APZ to the apartment, what with having to slow down every couple of blocks to wipe away tears. But it will not do for her to crash and die. Not yet. Not while she still has no idea what happened to Cassian.

Perhaps he made it back to the Palace before Nairi was killed. Perhaps he even managed to unleash the virus.

She wishes she could believe all this.

She is not really sure why she is going to check at the apartment, considering that their provisional plan had been to meet at the safehouse. But a nagging anxiety makes her want to check; it is possible that, if Cassian knew the situation to be dangerous, he avoided going to a secret location whise discovery could undermine their plan, in favour of following his presumable standard routine.

Or maybe she just needs to be doing something, even if riding a swoop at close to minimum speed, rather than sitting alone in the safehouse.

When she arrives outside the building and rides up to a level directly opposite their apartment windows, she sees that it is dark and empty. If Cassian had made it there he would have had no reason to conceal his presence, seeing how the apartment offers no real privacy.

Which means that he is either at the safehouse, after all, or…

She cannot yet bear to think of alternatives.

xxx

She rides back with a final glimmer of hope that she will get into the safehouse to see Cassian inside, but is not surprised, though she is crushed anew, to see it as dark and empty as their apartment.

She switches on the light, setting it to minimum intensity; her eyes are sore and aching. Everything seems the way she left it.

A faint flicker catches her eye; and she realizes with a sudden thrill that her datapad notification light is blinking, meaning an incoming message. She mentally kicks herself for having left it here; that was three hours ago, and she has no idea how long ago the message arrived.

When she looks at the sender ID, however, she is not even sure who it is from.

She struggles to process the fact that she has apparently received a greeting holo from the Imperial Palace Visitor Centre holo kiosk, a quaint feature offered by the visitor-unfriendly Palace to eager tourists. Their Palace visits are, in reality, limited to the cavernous entrance lobby and a glimpse of the main gallery, with the rest of the enormous complex strictly off-limits. But the Empire generously offers them an opportunity to send a free-of-charge holo from the visitor centre, carrying a holo image of the sender taken by the kiosk camera and official verification of the location, so that anyone receiving the message would be able to see that the happy sender is, indeed, standing at the seat of Imperial power. And by way of an extra flourish, the sender is allowed to add a 100-character message at the bottom.

Her heart leaps in her chest when she sees the familiar face… and then breaks into a million shards when she sees the words below.

 _Get out at once. Do not look for me. They have me now but I did it. I love you._

.

TBC

.


	13. fallout

She sinks down on the chair in front of the powered-down computer, the datapad screen still in her hands; and for several minutes she sits and stares at the holo. She is no longer crying; by now her stunned anguish is beyond tears.

Instead, there is an absurd thought stuck in her head. Cassian is not looking at the camera; his attention is on something happening outside the holo field. This is probably the last she will ever see of him; and she cannot even look into his eyes.

And he has sent her a message she may never be able to respond to.

 _Better now than never._

He knew what he was talking about the night before. And if she thought his words about breaking up had hurt, she did not know anything about being hurt.

She should not have been so harsh on him, even when he was wrong to suggest it. Because of that conversation, because of his prophetic but misguided insistence and because of her resentful reaction, the last evening they spent in each other's company was a sad and messy affair.

At least _he_ told her what he had wanted her to know, if they never saw each other afterwards. It does not matter that she has told him she loves him hundreds of times; all that matters to her now is that she may never have that chance again.

She may never see him again, except in this blurred holo. She may never again hear his voice, never feel his arms around her.

All the things they wanted to do, the plans and dreams they talked about, trying to see a future without the fighting; the lists they made, part idle entertainment and part serious intention, of places they wanted to go to, places they could live and maybe even start a family on if the war ended. _When_ the war ended. And now, none of this may matter anymore.

And the most heart-rending part of it is, he may be better off dead.

Nairi's bone-chilling account stands vivid in her mind. As a spy, there is every likelihood that he will end up in Lusankya; the ones who resist, she remembers, are tortured to death; the ones who break are tortured until they have revealed everything of value, and then executed.

She drops the datapad on the desk and _screams_. It starts as a piercing feral shriek and ends up an anguished howl. She is glad when her voice gives out; the searing ache in her burning throat helps, for a few seconds, block out the mental anguish.

When the sensation subsides, she bangs her fist on the desk so hard that the durasteel fixtures creak and the datapad jumps up into the air. Once again, the pain radiating from her hand and shooting up her arm is welcome; it helps clear her head.

No.

Wailing and wallowing will get her nowhere.

Nairi is gone, but there is still the probability that Cassian is alive. And so long as he is alive, she has a mission to fulfil; no less important than all the other missions they have accomplished on Coruscant.

There is one thing she does not regret saying to him the night before.

No matter what happened, no matter what arguments he made or what circumstances she faced, she would never leave him, and she is damned if she is leaving without him now.

She must find him, and do what he can to get him out of wherever he is, and keep him alive long enough to leave this blasted planet.

She can do it.

She has done it before.

xxx

But first, she must find out what happened to Nairi.

With a heavy heart and a grimly determined mind, she powers up the data station and brings up the Holonet screen and clicks down the menus. _News; Coruscant; Criminal; Today_ ; then a keyword search for _APZ_.

And there she sees it.

 _Human female murdered in the APZ_

 _A Coruscant resident identified as Nairi P., 27 years old, was found dead today in an abandoned storage facility on the northeast corner of 3356 and 1494, level 32, at 1655 standard time. The death apparently resulted from a stab wound inflicted with a vibroblade._

 _An air traffic camera installed on level 35 of 3355 and 1494 captured footage of the victim walking to the location where her body was discovered, accompanied by a human male, between 1624 and 1625._

The line sits above a small black rectangle; Jyn fights a surge of cold panic as she activates the holo.

It is grainy and indistinct, not surprising given the distance between the camera and the cropped portion of the recording shown here; if she did not know Nairi or Cassian well, she probably would not have recognized either of them. He is wearing a parka over his uniform that she has not seen before; he must have bought it on his way to the APZ to conceal his Imperial insignia. He has an arm around Nairi shoulders, and is obviously aware that she has difficulty walking. They are only seen for a few seconds before they turn toward what must be the warehouse entrance, and before the holo times out.

 _Any beings in possession of additional information about the murder or the person accompanying the victim in the footage above are requested to immediately contact Imperial Security._

She shuts down the Holonet screen and forces herself to take several deep breaths, fighting the impulse to cry. So Cassian has been detained on the suspicion of Nairi's murder… that, or else they also discovered that he was an Alliance agent after he uploaded the code. She cannot possibly believe that he really had anything to do with Nairi's death… unless there was some horrendous mistake on his part.

Either way, she won't know until – unless – she sees him again.

But while the news item was a fresh source of heartbreak, it also offers a tiny spark of hope.

If Cassian is a murder suspect, it means a greater chance that he is alive; it makes it more likely that he is awaiting a court martial rather than being interrogated as an enemy agent. Which could also mean he would be in a military prison rather than the dreaded Lusankya. There is no guarantee of that, of course, and he may still have been apprehended on both charges; but if the Imperials had discovered that he is a spy, they would have likely suppressed the public news of Nairi's death in favour of a top-secret investigation run by Imperial Intelligence.

Not that finding information on military prisons, or their inmates, is an easy task.

Almost five hours later, she has to give up.

She had no problem finding the shockingly long list of civilian prisons, and saw that it was no great challenge to break into their systems – at least the administrative part rather than the security and surveillance part – to find the inmate lists. But all the exercise told her was that those held civilian prisoners, and no one else; the military clearly deals with its deviants in separate establishments.

And those are nowhere to be found.

Like the ImPAIR database, they must be accessible only via Imperial military or intelligence networks by those with the required clearance, and protected by firewalls too powerful to be cracked in an acceptable length of time; and it is not as if she has weeks, or even days, to find Cassian before it is too late.

Which means that she must somehow get to an Imperial data station.

Easier said than done, now that she is probably a wanted fugitive herself.

She has been pondering the various and equally dubious options for the better part of half an hour when an idea occurs to her; it may not be a definitive solution but it might be her best immediate shot at one. She remembers Nairi talking about her fiancé once wasting a perfectly good evening of his leave studying something on his data station at their apartment. Sure, when Jyn asked her if she ever made use of that same data station for her intelligence gathering purposes, Nairi replied that she had only done it once or twice and generally avoided it, both for fear of discovery and because she did not want to be snooping around Davin's files behind his back. Nairi may have had her scruples on this account, and may have been justified in feeling that way, but Jyn has no such compunctions at the moment, when her friend is dead and Cassian's life is in immediate danger. If she can get into Jace's data station and use it as a starting point for her military prison search, it will be worth trying.

And as she recalls, Jace is supposed to be on duty on the Star Destroyer until the following afternoon.

Jyn picks up her bag with the comlink, ID and small stash of credits, this time sliding the datapad into it, and makes it back to the swoop bike she left parked outside.

She may not have a plan yet, but she knows where to start.

As she rides through the streets, less busy but still not deserted even in the middle of the night, her raw torment from the previous evening gradually crystallises into cold resolve. Same way as when her father died. Same way as when she found out Alderaan had been destroyed. Both of those times Cassian was there with her, to argue with her the first time, to comfort and encourage her the second.

She is alone now, but she will do what she can to make the Empire pay. For Nairi, for Cassian, for all the cruelty and injustice and heartbreak it has inflicted on countless beings. They may not live to see the Alliance win its final victory, but she will do what she can to bring it one step closer.

xxx

The door slides aside, and she steps into the dark and quiet apartment. Its owner is never coming back, but it does not make Jyn feel less of an intruder; more so, if anything. Still, she has a goal to accomplish, and she must set about it if she hopes to be done before Nairi's partner is back.

She finds a light control and dials it up to the minimum setting – her eyes are still red and aching – and looks around in search of the data station.

And starts in terror.

Davin Jace is sitting motionless in a corner of the couch in his Imperial Navy uniform, staring at her with a blaster trained on her head; when he speaks, his voice is almost unrecognizable, flat and hoarse.

"Give me one reason why I should not shoot you."

.

TBC

.


	14. chances of redemption

She knows, only too well, the overwhelming reason why she must live. With her being the only non-Imperial who knows what happened to Cassian, her being alive is crucial to his survival.

But she cannot tell Jace that; if she does, it certainly will not make things any clearer to _him_.

"I didn't kill her," she says instead.

"How do I know that?" he asks, still in the same ghostly voice.

She turns to fully face him before she answers, so that he finally has a good look at her; and seeing her red and puffy eyes and her dismal expression apparently sways him enough to make him lower the blaster muzzle.

"What I… " Jyn begins, "what the two of us were doing may have got her killed, but it is different from wanting her dead."

He says nothing, and Jyn, who wants to tell him more, and has to ask him a few things, has a dilemma. She is practically certain that the apartment is bugged; Nairi told her as much herself. So she can either carry on a half-pretend conversation here, or they can really talk somewhere else. She cannot take him to the main safehouse; that would be plain reckless; but she can take him to one of the other two. The one-room place, in particular, is close enough and can be reached without attracting attention even at this late-night hour.

But first, she needs to persuade him to leave.

"I need to show you something that is in my bag."

If he is suspicious, he does not show it; he just looks at her, but keeps the blaster pointed down.

Slowly, she reaches into her bag to produce the datapad. Then just as slowly, she steps over to the couch and sits down, close enough for him to see the screen. Once she has powered it up, she calls up the surveillance detection protocol, and watches with a grim satisfaction as the program maps the apartment and three flashing red dots appear on the schematic, one for each room, including the kitchen/dining area.

He looks at it for a few seconds, then turns to her.

"What do you want to do?"

"There is a place we can go to," she says simply.

Instead of an answer, he just gets up and heads for the door.

xxx

"What is this place?"

He might as well be apprehensive; it is immediately obvious that place is not lived in when they step inside, even if its location in the lower levels on the border of the APZ were not suspect enough. All Jyn did once she had bought it was sparingly furnish it with a basic desk, a chair, a narrow couch and a storage cabinet, where she put three days' worth of rations, a toolkit, a stack of datacards and an emergency stash of credits; and get a serviceable data terminal. A far cry from the powerful computer she assembled for the main safehouse, it is adequate for its basic purposes as a way to check the Holonet and a data entry point for intelligence that ends up transmitted via the automated relay.

"I rented it as a study room for classes I take", she says, trying not to sound too evasive.

If Jace is suspicious, he says nothing. Instead, he takes it as a cue to sit down on the chair in front of the desk, turning it so it faces away from the data terminal; and she has no choice but sit on the couch.

It is not an easy conversation to start; but while there is little she can do to make things easier for him, she has another life to save.

The trouble is, she realized as they were on their way here, that to have a shot at getting him to help her find Cassian, she has no choice but disclose the fact that Nairi was meeting Cassian shortly before she died. And no matter how she tried to twist it during their short ride, she could not come up with a glib way of explaining why it was that she could not meet with Nairi herself to pick up, or hand over, whatever it was that they may have needed to pass on to one another, considering how Cassian has an important job at the Palace and Jyn is allegedly an idle housewife.

Which means that she may not have much choice bit disclose what it is that Nairi, and Cassian and herself, really _did_ , and hope for the best. Or else be prepared to fight and restrain him and keep him here until she is able to put in motion whatever plan she manages to come up with.

No matter which way this ends up going, though, she has to start somewhere, and that _somewhere_ is a rather dark place.

"How much do you know about what happened?"

"I know she's dead." He stares into the middle distance as he goes on: "My commanding officer got a call from Imperial Security, and called me in to tell me she had been found dead… murdered. He said I could change my duty shifts to have three days off. I came here but nobody called to tell me or ask me anything." Another long pause. "If we were married I could have held a funeral. But she had no official surviving next of kin, and in this case they just… take the body."

His voice is steady if quiet, and she does not immediately realise that he is crying, not until she looks straight at him. He has a peculiar way of going about it; his eyes do not scrunch up and his mouth does not contort as Jyn's would. He just sits there with this stoic, expressionless handsome face as tears slip down his cheeks.

And there is nothing she can say because _I am sorry_ really, _really_ does not cut it.

"What about you? What do _you_ know?"

The question catches her unawares, but in a way, it makes things easier. For the next few seconds, at least; she cannot vouch for what may follow.

"I found out about – " she glances at her datapad screen, "six hours ago. I was supposed to be meeting with her, and when she didn't show up I went looking."

"How did you know where to look?"

 _Here we go_. She'd better survive this, for Cassian's sake.

"We had agreed that she would meet Cassian, my husband, there was a data file" – _a virus, but anyway_ – "he needed that she could bring over. And because he works" – _worked_ – "in the Palace and she was at the University" – _or close to it in the safehouse_ – "we all agreed that they would meet at this place in the APZ because it was a halfway point for both."

If he is surprised at this revelation, he does not show it; his face is frozen in the same set expression from before.

"Then when I did not hear from either of them I went looking, and a worker at the tapcafe I told them to meet at told me. And then I saw it on the Holonet."

He does not react, and for a moment she is not sure if she should show him the news item, if he could handle the ordeal of seeing it. Or if _she_ could, for that matter. But if she has resolved to be honest, this has to be part of it.

She powers up the data station, brings up the Holonet and shows him the item from the crime newsfeed. "This is all I found." Then, once he has read the impersonal lines, she goes on, "and this is the last time either of them was seen alive… well, almost."

He stares at the footage until it fades back to black. "Almost?"

"I'll explain."

But there is no way she can explain it without being dangerously, perhaps fatally, honest.

"If you loved her, then you will not report what I am about to tell you."

"I love her still."

And this, she figures, is the best assurance she can get under the circumstances.

"She was working for the Rebel Alliance."

Had she felt like placing bets on his reaction, she would have guessed he would be angry, or at the very least, incredulous; and had she placed such a bet, she would be now facing a spectacular loss, because his reaction, what with the way his shoulders sag and his head dips down, looks much more like resignation; and his next words confirm it.

"I knew it. I should have known."

'The reason she had to give the datacard to Cassian was because it contained a virus she and I had written that would let him, let us sabotage an Imperial database."

For the first time in this conversation, he looks up with a hint of surprise. "What, your husband too?"

It is Jyn's turn to look down. "All three of us. He and I were here on a mission, and Nairi helped us with it. Actually…" She might as well give credit where credit is due, "she was a major part of it."

"Well, you're lucky you are _both_ Rebels."

She looks up, half expecting him to be sporting a sarcastic smirk; but he looks dead serious.

"It wasn't a matter of luck, strictly speaking," she has to explain. "We both were Rebels before we were married. Before we even met." True, she had temporarily switched from rebellion to petty theft at that point, but anyway.

Somehow, this makes him look more miserable than ever. But when he speaks, his quiet voice carries a peculiar conviction.

"I knew it was… very likely she sympathized with the Rebels, it was to be expected in her case, really. And knowing what her reasons were, I never thought of confronting her about it… the reality is, I was afraid that if I brought it up she would get furious and leave me, and I couldn't take that. I never cared much about the Empire anyway. It was a natural thing for me to follow my father and grandfather and two of my uncles into the Navy, but it was more a matter of family tradition than anything. The worst thing is…" his voice almost breaks at this point, and he has to begin again, "the worst thing now is that she'll never know I would have stood by her if she'd told me. If she'd trusted me enough to – Maybe I wouldn't have become a Rebel outright but I would have left the Navy. I was frustrated with it for years, but I didn't care so long as I was stationed here and we were together and I could see her every three days, I didn't care about anything else. And now…"

He looks away, and this time she catches an anguished grimace on that chiseled face of his as he wipes away fresh tears. "I don't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing you showed up at our apartment when you did. I was about to – If you came in a few minutes later you would have found another body for the Empire to burn."

So that is why he was sitting there in the dark, blaster in hand.

Jyn shakes her head. "She would have wanted you to live. She may not have told you she worked for the Rebellion but she really loved you. She was waiting for our mission to be complete to tell you… to say yes if you asked her to marry you." _Again_ ; she stops short of saying this part. "And when I asked her a couple of days ago if she wanted to leave with us when it was all over, she refused because she wanted to stay with you." Jyn is probably not helping, but she figures Nairi wanted him to know.

"Maybe it would have been better if she'd left with you," he says, very quietly. "That way she might have lived."

They'll never know, but right now, _leaving_ is a tenuous proposition.

"We don't know that. Maybe they would have caught us … and the way things stand now, I cannot leave until I find Cassian.

"Do you know he is alive?"

It is not easy answering this question; then again, she need not remind herself who she is talking to and what he is going through.

"All I can say is, I don't know that he's dead. After that footage in the APZ, there was one last time I saw him, or rather heard from him." She brings up the holo message on her datapad. "He sent this about an hour after he met with Nairi." _1811_ ; after staring at the image for who knows how long, the time is burned into her memory.

Davin looks at it; and reads the words; and looks at _her_ ; and she knows that he understands. But she does not merely need him to understand; she needs him to help.

"He's probably the only one who knows what happened to Nairi. He was likely arrested as a murder suspect." Either that, or for espionage; and in this case, an accusation of murder is by far the better proposition.

Jace looks at her. "It looks… like he was helping her… in the holo. I don't think he..."

"I don't think so either, but _they_ might. So if we can find him…" She is not sure the argument will work, but it is the best she can think of.

Jace's next words send a chill to her spine. "It's too late to change what happened for Nairi…" Then he looks up at her. "But there may still be a chance to save your husband."

She has to stop herself from rushing into hugging him, but her eyes probably say it all.

"What are you thinking of doing?" he asks.

That, at least, is easy to answer. "Find out where he is, and get him out."

His reaction is immediate, if subdued. "You're out of your mind."

She cannot argue with that. "I know." She pauses, then explains: "That's why I got into your apartment earlier. Nairi offered to add me and Cassian as authorized visitors when we decided on this plan with the datacard, in case something went wrong and we needed a place to go to. And I thought…" Oh well, she might as well say it. "I thought that I could crack the passcode at your workstation to find out the location of Imperial military prisons."

If he has an issue with it, he does not show it. "I can tell you the locations. There are two in Imperial City besides Lusankya. No one really knows where Lusankya is, and he'd better not end up in there because Isard's one crazy bitch."

This makes Jyn grin despite herself. "You know something? " she starts. "That virus datacard I was talking about, the one they both… got in mortal danger for… it was designed to overwrite a list of two million beings who were scheduled to be arrested and sent to Lusankya. Nairi wrote the virus, well, I helped, but it was _her_ idea, and Cassian stole the access credentials from an Intel officer to launch the overwrite. From what he said in his message, it looks like he succeeded."

Davin has been eyeing her intently throughout the explanation, but now looks down, his shoulders sagging again. "I wish I'd known. Maybe I could have helped."

"It could have got you killed, too."

He looks up again. "Better me than her."

"I mean, you both."

"As I say, that wouldn't scare me." Then, before she can object, he goes on. "What's your plan?"

Jyn was hoping they might get to this point; but when he says it, she is to thrilled as to be momentarily at a loss. Apart from the fact that she really has not had a chance to think it through. "I- I don't have a detailed plan yet."

The way Davin rolls his eyes at her is uncannily similar to Cassian.

"I was thinking of posing as a convict," Jyn ventures.

He immediately shoots down the suggestion. "How can you pose as a convict destined for a military prison if you have no official Imperial rank and no service record?" Seeing her crestfallen expression as the truth of his words dawns on her, he adds, "I can try to find out which prison he's in, but those are too well guarded and defended." While Jyn is still raking her mind for ideas, he continues: "Our only chance will be to get _him_ ordered out of the prison on some pretext rather than _you_ going in yourself."

It is a sensible proposition, but the part that really makes her eyes light up is the _our_ reference.

"Makes sense." She does her best to keep her voice steady. "How can we do that?"

He ponders it for a moment. "Once we know which prison it is, again assuming they didn't find out he's a spy and send him to Isard's hellhole, they need to receive transfer orders or an interrogation request to move him offsite. I can't do it, these have to come from a verifiable authorized source and as a Navy lieutenant I wouldn't qualify." He pauses. "Is there anyone you know among your husband's peers or superiors who might be persuaded to help on a more or less plausible pretext?"

She sighs. "Cassian mentioned having met a couple of potential sources, including a fellow officer who he noticed had… reservations about the service, and he managed to recruit them as informers, but we agreed he wouldn't tell me the names until we were offplanet. That way if I got caught and questioned" – _tortured_ – "I wouldn't be able to say anything."

"Good idea, but it doesn't help us now… What about his superior?"

She involuntarily scoffs. "Merkon? He's a dumbass, and a nasty one at that."

" _Merkon?_ " The way Davin says it, it sounds as if he knows the man. "That's the liaison unit, Protocol Service, is it?" He takes her surprised expression as a prompt to continue: "An uncle of mine was the Thyferran Zaltin ambassador here two years ago." Seeing her confusion, he explains: They alternate planetary ambassadors every year between the two bacta cartels, Zaltin and Xucphra, so each cartel gets an equal shot at lobbying."

"Yeah," she admits with a sigh, "same unit, same man."

"Too bad." His preoccupied expression mirrors hers. "Ravann is the only normal person around there, but he runs a different unit within the DCPS anyway."

"So I heard." She recalls Winter's words at their initial mission briefing just over two months ago; it feels more like a year. _Ravann is more of a human being, he has a brain that goes beyond following orders._ "Trouble is, I haven't even met him."

"You've met Merkon, then?" Unexpectedly, he looks interested. "Maybe there's some way you could use your acquaintance…"

She shakes her head. "From what I picked up from our meeting, he doesn't think much of me."

"I suspect he doesn't think much of anyone except Palpatine."

Hearing him spit out the name, she is tempted to say that the already-completed part of their mission involved getting detailed plans of the Emperor's travels for an assassination attempt, but stops short of so momentous a disclosure. "You're probably right."

Then it hits her. "What if _you_ bring me in to him as a detainee? Say you caught me at your and Nairi's apartment and have reasons to believe I'm the real murder suspect, and get him to bring in Cassian so he can question both of us? And then as soon as he's there, we can deal with Merkon and make our way out." Hopefully, with all three of them making it out alive.

He thinks it over for a few seconds. "That might work. Not guaranteed, but it might. From what I gather Merkon's a stickler for procedure and might consider it… unorthodox, but he's also a big-time coward and is sure to be scared because a subordinate of his has apparently committed a crime. So if he can somehow prove that you rather than him are the real criminal, he'll certainly go for it." He looks straight at Jyn, "Would _you_ go for it? I mean, it's really a high-risk attempt."

She almost interrupts, him. "I'll take any chance I can use, and this looks like the only real one."

He nods. "So… we need a pair of handcuffs for you that can be rigged with a spring-loaded release, as a minimum. And weapons we can bring in concealed."

This is going a lot better than she may have imagined an hour or so ago. "I was thinking a few glop grenades, they are compact and make minimum noise."

"That would work, but stun spore grenades are better than glop as they knock out their targets for up to an hour. Glop grenades just immobilize them, and they can shout for backup."

"You're right. Do you know where to get these and the cuffs?" She hopes he knows enough about the local underworld to suggest a good supplier, or else she will have to put a message through to the Alliance and spend precious time waiting for them to reply.

"I can get these," he volunteers instead. "I can go back to the Destroyer tomorrow, I can say I'm going to a memorial gathering for Nairi at the University and I need my dress uniform."

"Are they really going to hold one?"

"I don't know," he admits. "It's possible, they are more… normal beings at the University compared to most regular Imperials. But if I can't make it there, I'd rather… be doing something she would approve of." He is silent for a while before continuing. "What else do we need?"

"A couple of swoop bikes for our getaway, but that's easy, I have an Alliance expense account, kind of, and I can get them and leave them in a safe spot near the Palace… And I need a way to freeze or loop the security camera feed in Merkon's office. There's bound to be a camera." If they can avoid raising an alarm via holo footage they'll have a better chance of getting out alive.

He shakes his head a fraction. "There won't be one inside his office, from what I've seen of standard Imperial layouts, but there _will_ be one or two in the reception area right outside it, yes… We can try to get to these from my data station tomorrow. I know I can access the Palace mainframe to see the basic protocol and security arrangements. If you can then use it to hack into the surveillance subsystem and access the camera feed, we'll be all set. Can you come back to the apartment at, say, 0700 tomorrow?"

Technically, it _later today_ by now, but it is beyond the point. "Sure. We'll have to remember not to talk, so the bugs don't pick it up. And then we can make a scene of me coming in and you catching me."

" _Bastards_ ," he says under his breath. "I had no idea, never even occurred to me. Nairi knew, I suppose." When Jyn nods, he goes on, in an echo of his earlier words: "I wish she'd told me."

xxx

It is almost two o'clock standard when they get out and she locks up the safehouse before dropping Davin off at Nairi's apartment and going to the main safehouse where she plans to spend the rest of the night.

He watches her go through the practiced steps of setting near-invisible alarm triggers with a mix of curiosity and concern.

"Anything wrong?"

A lot is wrong, of course, staring with his fiancée being dead, but if he has a specific cause of worry, he'd better tell her.

"Not right now, no. It's just that… there are two of us against all of them. You do realise that there's a high probability it may not work?"

She recalls a favourite saying of Han Solo's; by now Leia has repeated it enough times for the line to have stuck. "One of our Alliance friends used to say, _Never tell me the odds_."

Davin's skeptical look tells her he is far from convinced, especially since he has clearly picked up on the _used to_ part. "And where is he now?"

 _Frozen in a block of carbonite, blast it._ "Last thing I heard, he's in a spot of trouble, but his…" _Girlfriend? Loved one? Verbal sparring partner?_ "lady and other Alliance friends are working to get him out of it."

He looks up at her. "You people really stick up for one another, don't you?"

She cannot keep the pride out of her voice. "We do. That's why I refuse to give up. Today, as you say, there are two of us. Yesterday evening it was just one of me, but even then I knew there were others I could count on. It's just that there isn't much time to help Cassian and they are lightyears away."

He says nothing but looks at her with an oddly wistful look; and it prompts her to continue. "Why don't you come with us if we make it out of there?" She still refuses to entertain the possibility of Cassian not being among the party. "You said it yourself, you don't really care about Imperial service."

For an instant he looks inspired, but it quickly gives way to dejection. "They'll never accept me as one of them, I am guilty by default as an Imperial officer."

Now _that_ , she positively refuses to go along with.

"You think _you're_ guilty? I'll show you guilty. Get back in here." She gets back to the safehouse entrance, puts up her palm against the scanner and disables the alarm triggers. He is visibly confused but follows her back in as she switches on the light and sits on top of the desk, and sits down in the chair in front of her.

"You know me as Jan. My full name is Jyn Erso Andor, and my father designed the Death Star."

If _that_ is not the ultimate argument to refute the notion of the Alliance refusing people based on historical guilt, she does not know what _is_. Davin certainly looks stunned.

"Don't know if you heard of Galen Erso…" Seeing a vague sign of recognition in his face, she goes on, "He led the team of scientists who came up with the design, and when he realized its military potential he wanted to pull out of the project but was told to continue. He took my mother and me and fled to a planet called Lah'mu, and we lived there for several years until they found us. They killed my mother, I was able to run away and hide from them until a friend of my parents', a guerrilla leader, came to pick me up. But for years after that I was convinced my father had voluntarily gone back to working for the Empire. Then I found out that he'd built a weakness, a fatal flaw into the design that later allowed us to destroy it. That was how I met Cassian, he needed me to find my father and get those plans. We found him and he was killed right after that, but he told us where to find the plans. And because of what I learned he'd done, and because he reached out for me, and because of what Cassian and I were able to do, we were able to stop that thing from destroying other planets after Alderaan." _Oh, to hell with it_. "That's what we're doing now, we found out the Emperor is rebuilding this thing…" There is no mistaking the horror and disgust in Davin's face now. "And we're working to destroy it." She takes a deep breath before delivering her final argument. "It's not what you've done in the past that matters, but who you are now and what you are going to do from now on, today, tomorrow, that will decide if your life mattered and how you will be remembered."

He keeps staring at her, spellbound; but when he speaks, his words confuse her for an instant.

"Thank you."

Oncve again, she studies his face for a trace of sarcasm, but finds only seriousness and a fresh determination.

"For what?" She is still not sure.

"For giving me hope."

.

TBC

.

The story of Zaltin and Xucphra comes from (of course) the X-Wing books. Grenade types are also true to EU canon but come from a sourcebook.


	15. do or die

He should have known that offworlders meant trouble.

It is 1750, and Major Merkon would normally permit himself to prepare to leave the office at this time; but not today, not when he is racked by anxiety and exasperation. Just to think of it; one of his officers, and one of the top performers at that, has been arrested – and on such shameful charges, no less. If he had killed a non-human, Merkon would have been able to condone such behaviour, at least mentally, but these… Worst of all, this is bound to reflect on the Major's own standing and sully his heretofore pristine reputation as an adherent to rules and procedures who cultivates a culture of unquestioned compliance and uniform dedication in his unit.

He really should insist on selecting his subordinates not only exclusively from humans, but exclusively from Coruscant natives like himself. They may not be as intelligent as Andor, but they are more dependable and less likely to cause embarrassment for the unit; intelligence – the brain kind, not the secret information kind – is overrated anyway, especially when it is paired with reckless tendencies, as appears to be the case with the Captain.

Still, he would never have imagined that those tendencies would lead Andor to become entangled with someone called Nairi Panteer. Obviously, an Alderaanian, judging by the name. He has always thought that Alderaanian natives should have been banned from residing on Coruscant after the Empire's demonstration of its awesome power.

Coming to think of it, the Major might be correct in his earlier hunch that this may, after all, be an accident, at least on the Captain's side. An Alderaanian is practically certain to harbor pro-Rebellion views; what if she attacked Andor seeing that he is an Imperial officer, and he acted in self-defence? This turn of events would be greatly advantageous to Merkon and the unit alike; and he is prepared to investigate the matter to see if there is indeed any possibility of that.

Which is why he had to stoop to humbly asking Lieutenant Drysso for a reading access password to Madame Isard's precious database. It is certainly a formidable and supremely useful tool, although it is rather questionable that he, a Major at the head of an important unit, should be at the mercy of a mere liaison officer who is two full rank grades below him when accessing it. Imperial servants as loyal and tested as Merkon should be given permanent access on their own merits, really. But of course Ysanne Isard is too preoccupied with maintaining the secrecy surrounding Imperial Intelligence, even when it flies in the face of operational efficiency. There is probably truth to the rumours that she is scheming to undermine His Imperial Majesty's supreme authority, in which case she should stand a trial for treason.

But these concerns are not as pressing as verifying that this Miss Panteer, whoever she was, was a Rebel sympathiser.

With a hint of trepidation, Merkon calls up the ImPAIR start-up screen, enters the credentials, and enters _Nairi Panteer_ on the query page. It had better be true.

 _Subject not found._

He re-types the name; same result.

How unfortunate… then, just to be sure, he searches his memory for the names of known Rebel sympathisers who will undoubtedly be listed. Who else is there with a name beginning with a P?

 _Lannix Pessyri_ , he types. If this one is not listed, he would not know what to think.

 _Subject not found._

Increasingly alarmed, the Major calls up the complete list of targets starting with _Pess_. Maybe it is _Pessiri_? _Pessyiri_? He cannot recall.

There is nothing in the list approximating either, and his thoughts are racing as he mechanically scrolls down the column… until his eyes snag on a name.

 _Sate Pestage._

Surely it cannot be…

He opens the entry and reads the contents in a state of increasing cold dread.

 _Name: Sate Pestage_

 _Age (standard years): 59_

 _Occupation and position held: Grand Vizier to His Imperial Majesty_

 _ID code: 00101020029717STPST_

 _Registered location: Imperial Center, Imperial City, Palace compound unit NW03/52D/17_

 _Annotations:_

 _organized a student protest 7612_

 _burned an effigy of His Imperial Majesty 7700_

 _threw an incendiary device into an Imperial warehouse 7784_

 _Alliance Intelligence assessment: Subject shows active opposition to Imperial values and beliefs._

 _Suggested course of action: subject to be detained no later than 7900 and transported for processing at LSK, batch 34._

By now the Major's dread has blossomed into a full-blown state of panic.

It is obvious that the criminal misdeeds could not have been committed by their purported subject.

The ImPAIR database has been compromised.

And likely as not, if he informs Drysso, the lieutenant will accuse Merkon himself of having tampered with it.

And then instead of recognition of his tireless service for the benefit of the Empire, the Major will be Lusankya-bound himself.

The comm console beep is so unexpected that Merkon literally jumps up in his chair.

"What is it?" he snaps, seeing that the call comes from the nearest entrance checkpoint.

"Sir, this is Sergeant Kemple, entrance checkpoint SSW21. There is a Navy lieutenant who is requesting to see you, and he has brought a detainee with him. Their IDs both check out, Lieutenant Davin Jace, Imperial Star Destroyer _Indomitable,_ and Jan Andor, civilian.

 _What the blazes..?_

"Put Lieutenant Jace through, I need to speak to him."

"Yes, Sir."

A few seconds later, a different voice sounds on the speaker. "Major Merkon?"

"Speaking. Lieutenant Jace?"

"Speaking, Sir. Sir, I have apprehended this woman, identified as Mrs Jan Andor, when she broke into my partner's apartment earlier today. My partner, Miss Panteer, was murdered yesterday, and I suspect that Mrs Andor is complicit in the murder. She has been blabbering something about her husband straying from her and this being Miss Panteer's fault. Miss Panteer was a loyal Imperial citizen, and I refuse to consider this woman's ridiculous assertions, but she has been insisting that I bring her to you instead of straight to prison as she is claiming to have sensitive information concerning her husband that she says she must share with you."

That stupid sex-crazed provincial cow Jan Andor. She got her husband's head addled in addition to her own, and has probably committed the murder that he has been accused of. Knew she was trouble. Should have killed her.

But on the positive side, if the blame can be laid squarely on _her_ shoulders, it will reflect less badly on Merkon and his unit than if it had been the Captain's doing.

"Very well, Lieutenant. Bring her up. Do you need an escort?"

"No, thank you, Sir. I have her restrained and the guards have indicated the location of your office to me on the schematic. And she is coming willingly as she is convinced of her innocence." There is no mistaking the mockery in Jace's tone; clearly, a man after Merkon's own heart.

"Very well."

As the Major waits for his visitors, he reminds himself not to get complacent. Certainly, this new development is likely to bring good tidings; but the cloud of scandalous crime is far from gone, to say nothing of the terrifying matter of the ImPAIR database contents. Still, as he sits and waits, he is aware of having been given a reprieve, no matter how limited.

And then his office explodes.

xxx

As they made their way from the checkpoint to the reception, Jyn did her best to memorise the layout, or rather to superimpose it in her mind over the map she and Davin had studied on his data station, so that they can be sure to quickly make it back and out of the building, no matter what they may be faced with. It looks fairly uncomplicated; the wide corridor leading from the entrance, past the checkpoint manned by three guards, brought them to a turbolift bay, consisting of four lifts and four corridors running between them, intersecting at right angles. From what she could see, this rectangular grid pattern of corridors, and lift bays at the intersections along the corridor running parallel to the external perimeter wall, accessed by similar corridors connecting to the regularly-spaced entry points, is repeated throughout the building.

Up on the fourth floor, they walk through one of the main side corridors into a secondary passage. These passages run between the rows of offices within the rectangular blocks, and office doors open into these rather than outwards, giving the wider corridors the appearance of sterile empty spaces and the secondary ones the appearance of an insect hive. And Merkon, with a spacious reception serving as a buffer between his office and the passage, is the local queen bee.

Once they are out of sight of nearby office occupants, it takes Jyn a fraction of a second to discreetly press the catch releasing the spring in her rigged handcuffs, and the moment her hands are free, she and Davin take their positions on either side of the reception door. He pushes it open, and she throws in one of the stun spore grenades before Davin quickly pulls the door closed again. The next second she sees the rectangular door outlined in a brief brilliant flash coming from inside. They wait a few seconds longer for the spores to settle before pushing the door open again; they are faced with an aide-de-camp slumped in a chair at a desk and another Imperial lying on the floor in front of it.

The catch is, there is only one blaster rifle between those two, the aide-de-camp's. Still, better than nothing. Jyn steps over to retrieve it before handing it ti Davin, and kicks open the door to Merkon's office.

Davin walks in, rifle at the ready and pointed at Merkon's head. As the other man gapes at him, he walks behind the desk and up to Merkon's chair, his aim unwavering.

"If you want to save your hide, you'll sit and listen."

Merkon's first impulse is to go for the comm console on the desk to alert the guards; it is cut short when Davin quickly shifts the rifle, aiming down to shoot Merkon in the kneecap. The Major lets out a high-pitched howl, both his hands clutching his leg above the knee; Davin walks back in front of the desk and sits down in a chair facing Merkon.

"This was to make sure we have your undivided attention." He is icy calm now, a typical Thyferran; no trace of the man Jyn saw last night, expect perhaps for his red and puffy eyes. "Next time I'll aim higher."

A few seconds later, Merkon finds his voice. "Wha- what is it you want?"

"What I said from the start. I want you to order that Captain Andor be brought here immediately. You can make the call now, but if I see it going in a direction I don't like, you know how the call will be ended."

Merkon gulps and nods his agreement; reaches gingerly for the console and presses a succession of buttons on the panel.

A few more seconds later, the speaker comes to life.

"Imperial Center Primary Military Detention Facility liaison office, Major Chett speaking. Who is this?"

"This is Major Merkon of the Diplomatic Corps Protection Service, Protocol services unit." At least Merkon is keeping a reasonably steady voice. "One of my officers, a Captain Andor, was arrested at approximately 1815 yesterday and is currently detained at your facility awaiting court martial for charges including the murder of a civilian. I need him urgently for questioning, and I request that he be brought to my office under escort. I shall inform you when he is being brought back to you as soon as I have completed the questioning."

There is a long minute's pause as Major Chett is apparently busy verifying that the request is coming from Merkon and that Captain Andor is, indeed, held at their prison. Then: "Very well, Major. We shall send Captain Andor under armed escort to your office in five minutes. He must be returned to us no later than 2000, and I shall need you to send us a written memorandum with a brief summary of the interrogation by 1000 tomorrow. Please confirm your office location."

"SSW21/4B/160."

"Very well, Major. Chett out."

Davin reaches over and presses the button terminating the call.

Then they sit and wait.

xxx

It cannot be more than twenty standard minutes later when the comm beeps again; but it feels like two hours. Davin motions with the blaster for Merkon to pick up, before bringing his aim back to Merkon's forehead.

"Major Merkon speaking."

"Sir, this is the SSW21 entrance checkpoint again. We have Captain Andor here under escort. According to them, he has arrived here for questioning at your office."

The guard's voice sounds vaguely incredulous; it is likely that he knows Cassian, and is surprised to see him arrive as a prisoner. But Jyn does not have time to dwell on this, elated to hear proof that he is alive, and only four floors away.

"Very well, have him brought up to my office."

Davin cuts off the call again, and Merkon relaxes somewhat, no doubt convinced that the arrival of Cassian's prison escort will soon shift the odds in his favour; so much so that, between the relief and the shock of his shattered kneecap, he turns talkative.

"You have gone insane," he yelps, turning on Davin. "I am sorry to hear that your partner has been killed, but this – this – mutinous action will get you court-martialled, Lieutenant, I'll see to it personally." Seeing Davin's imperturbable face, he goes on, growing animated. "For all I know you want to face Andor so you can shoot him for allegedly killing your partner. But as you were saying earlier, how do we know that this woman here did not do it? Or even if that is proven to be the case, how do we know that your partner was not stalking Andor for criminal ends, seeing her Alderaanian background? How do we know she was not a secret Rebel?"

Davin's expression changes the tiniest bit for a fraction of a second, but it is enough to tell Jyn that Merkon has just made what may be the biggest mistake of his life.

"You know something? She _was_."

And before Jyn can wonder why Davin would be calmly confessing this to a diehard Imperial, he steadies his aim and shoots Merkon point blank.

The major sags into his chair with a purple blaster bolt burn smack in the middle of his forehead, his brain fried; Jyn knows she should regret the death of a fellow sentient, but cannot muster the compassion.

"Let's get out of here," she says to Davin instead. They need to wait for Cassian, but staying inside an office with a single point of entry is a sure way to get trapped. It will be better for them to find their way back to the nearest turbolift bank and wait for Cassian to get there; that way, at least, they will have multiple venues of retreat and escape.

By the time they get to the reception door, they can already hear the clatter of stormtrooper feet outside. Someone in a nearby office must have heard the blaster shots and alerted them.

She pulls her remaining stun grenade out of her vest pocket and shows it to Davin.

He shrugs. "Their helmets have built-in gas masks," he mutters to her. "But if they don't suspect an attack they won't have activated them." So even though he has two more grenades left, this will work once, but not again.

He pulls the door open a fraction, and she tosses the grenade outside; he slams the door shut, and once again, they watch a flash of light behind the door and wait.

There are five of them on the floor outside the reception, and this time, both she and Davin can have the rifles they need. But as they make their way to the turbolift bay, they see a white-clad platoon clattering its way toward them from the next bay over.

"Go to the lifts and call them all here," Davin prompts her. "I'll hold them back." It is a sensible thing to do; ideally, it will give them a choice of up to four lifts to take on their way out, and if nothing else, it will bring at least one of them here quickly; and they can get in and use it as a defensive position as they wait for Cassian.

The trouble is, with the four corridors branching out from it, the turbolift bay is a veritable crossfire trap.

She sprints over to the lifts and leaps from one to another, pressing the call buttons; she is nonplussed as to why the buttons are not synchronized, but at least they are lucky that these do not require palm prints or similar forms of authorization. Palm prints would be an issue for glove-wearing stormtroopers, she realises; but they could have set these up to be operated by security cards or some such. Good thing they did not.

Her task completed, Jyn backs into the corridor ending in the narrow window above the entrance four floors down. This way she knows that no one will come up behind her; but Davin, who has been shooting back at the platoon pursuing them, has ended up backing into the corridor opposite hers, leading deeper into the entrails of the Palace.

And there is an Imperial officer walking up behind his back.

" _Davin!_ "

She screams his name at the top of her lungs as she brings up the blaster rifle to bear, but she cannot take good aim as Davin is between her and his assailant; he hears her and starts to swerve, but before she can do anything, the Imperial pulls the trigger.

It it is too late. She is still yelling when she sees half a dozen scarlet blaster bolts slam into his back, before he collapses, and she knows that all the bacta on Thyferra could not save him now. Now that there is nothing separating her from the Imperial, she has a clear field of vision, and when she pulls the trigger she sees him crumble with a grim satisfaction; but ultimately, it is an empty victory. She feels the tears swim up in her eyes, and angrily brushes them away. There nothing she can do, but it does not make it hurt any less.

The chime of the turbolift next to her brings her out of the momentary stupor. She hears the doors slide open, and when no one gets out, she realises that the lift must have arrived here on her summons. She dashes toward it and backs into it, shooting back at the stormtroopers outside; the instant she has sufficient cover, she pushes the button that closes the doors.

And then she realises that she is not alone.

"One move and I'll shoot."

The command is given in a cool, level voice, leaving her in no doubt as to the seriousness of the speaker's intentions. If that were not enough, presently she hears the safety click.

But what really makes her blood run cold is that _she knows that voice_.

.

TBC

.

Sate Pestage is a canon EU character, but all that is known of him is that he was an Imperial Grand Vizier.

.

Now I really feel bad.

With Nairi, I always knew she would get killed; before I even knew who she was and before she had a name, the character that became her was _the Rebel who dies_. Not that it made it easier to "kill" her once she was a fully-fledged person, as it were, even if a fictional one, that I had grown attached to. But we are talking the franchise that, while being generally upbeat, showed us the destruction of Alderaan and the death of Luke's aunt and uncle and Ben Kenobi (and Biggs and Porkins and a few dozen others) in its opening film, to say nothing of what happens in _Rogue One_ , [and to say nothing of Han and Luke dying in the newest Disney sequels that I refuse to watch for that very reason.] And while I would never go so far as killing Jyn or Cassian – the whole point of these fics has been to keep them alive as an AU scenario to the canon _Rogue One_ ending – I had to show that it _could_ , just as easily, have been either of them dying on Coruscant; or else their apparently dangerous mission would be a cakewalk in reality.

But while Nairi was thus doomed from the start, her fiancé, then known only as _the Imperial who defects_ , was originally expected to survive this plot and live to join the Alliance. And I was torn on the decision between having him do just that, or killing him as well. I still am, sort of; I'd like to think that his character is alive in a parallel universe. In the end the _Rogue One_ tribute mentality won out; I figured that I would have him and Nairi be this lovely tragic couple to follow the fates of Baze and Chirrut, [and the canon fate of Jyn and Cassian]; and I figured that _he_ would probably want it that way within the plot, notwithstanding the fact that he was inspired to help Jyn and Cassian (thus, unbeknownst to Jyn, his hope at the end of the previous chapter was more of a hope of a heroic death than of a longer life); but by killing him, I realise, I have ended up joining the execrable ranks of plot writers who use the vile _redemption = death_ trope, which I honestly detest. For that, I am truly sorry.

The way I see it fitting in with the EU canon, specifically, with my beloved X-Wing books, is that one of the X-Wing series' central characters, an ace Rogue Squadron pilot named Bror Jace who plays a significant role in Isard's defeat and in the liberation of Thyferra, is Davin's younger cousin who decided to join the Rogues when he learned of Davin's change of heart and heroic sacrifice. And unlike Davin, _this_ guy made it alive to the end of the series, though his presumed death at one point served as a clever deception to trick the Empire.

And talking about headcanon, the way I imagined it, Major Ravann, mentioned in the previous chapter, is one of the two Imperials Cassian was able to recruit as an undercover agent on this mission, but seeing how Ravann never has reason to show up in the plot in person, I had no convenient way to insinuate this bit of info into their conversations.


	16. standoff

She is careful not to make any sudden moves. Slowly, she crouches down and puts her blaster rifle down on the turbolift floor, before standing up, just as slowly, doing her best not to lose her balance so as not to invite a shot.

"Kick it over to me."

She pushes it back with her foot, again careful not to trip. She can hear him pick it up and thumb off the safety catch, so now, likely as not, he has two rifles trained on her.

"Press the zero button."

Had she been faced with a cooperative fellow occupant, she might have suggested going up and over to the next turbolift bank, but being in two sets of crosshairs is not the time for contradicting instructions.

She hears him step over to the front of the turbolift, and when he is level with her she finally does a quarter turn to look at her adversary.

She was quite certain she knew what – _who_ – to expect, but it is still a shock.

"Cassian…"

Perhaps the really shocking part is that he looks exactly the same as he did the last time she saw him, when he was leaving for the Palace a day and a half ago; the same as he did in last night's holo. He is still wearing the Imperial uniform, even though the rank insignia have been stripped off. He does not look hurt or haggard, so his condition, whatever it is, is unlikely to be the result of torture. And there was no way they could have had a clone of Cassian handy to produce on this exact occasion.

And he shows absolutely no sign of recognizing her.

He certainly looks real, not a droid or hologram; if anything, the bodies of two stormtroopers she now sees in the back of the turbolift confirm that she is dealing with a real person; and make it even more unlikely, on top of the scientific impossibility, that Isard managed to brainwash him in record time, turning him into a compliant instrument of Imperial malice.

"Give me one reason why I should not pull the trigger."

She heard almost exactly the same words less than a day ago; on the positive side, she now knows that Davin Jace had no real intention of shooting her when he said it. But she still has to be very careful in choosing her reaction and her reply, considering that she is dealing with an expert marksman with a bad case of frayed nerves and an obviously patchy memory, who killed his armed guards in the lift before they could raise an alarm.

There are any number of possible replies that flash through her mind; the trouble is, none of them are guaranteed to convince him. _I am your wife_. _I love you_. _I am on your side_. _You will likely regret it later_. All true, and he probably will not believe any of them.

She is still lost for an answer and recovering from the initial shock of the situation when the lift arrives on the main floor… and as the doors slide open, she yells out the only answer possible under the circumstances.

" _Get down!_ "

There are stormtroopers waiting for them in the lobby; they must have heard the commotion he caused in the turbolift dispatching his guards on the way up. She grabs the front of his uniform jacket with both hands and falls backwards, dragging him with her; and is belatedly pleased to realise that he has not shot her, and that the bolts from the stormtroopers' rifles slammed harmlessly into the back of the turbolift.

She reaches up to press the button closing the doors, and as soon as they are shut she slams her hand on the panel, hoping that she has hit a floor far enough to give them time to recover and shake off any attempt at pursuit.

They both scramble to their feet; he is still holding both rifles but is no longer aiming either one at her. Several seconds later, the lift arrives at what turns out to be the 12th floor; when the doors open, they both wait a couple of seconds to make sure that the corridors outside are empty, then peek out before finally leaving the relative safety of their position to step out.

The floor looks deserted; tangible proof of the valid reasoning behind her and Davin's decision to wait until as close as practicable to the end of the day shift to put their plan in motion while still able to complete it before shift change. The day shift staff have already left, and are in all likelihood boarding the shuttles that will take them back to their barracks and quarters, and the evening shift has not yet arrived.

Cassian must have arrived at the same idea she had earlier, of going over to the next turbolift bank to make their way out, because as soon as they get their bearings, seeing the narrow slat of the outside window at the end of one of the corridors, they start walking along the one intersecting with it, going parallel to the outside wall in the direction of the next exit. This time they call two lifts, but make sure that these are on opposite ends of the same axis, so that any receiving party on the main floor will have to guess which one they really are in.

They are already headed down when he addresses her again.

"How do you know me?"

She has to fight the chill running down her spine. Maybe if she gives him enough facts, it will jog his memory.

"We met four years ago, you went with me to the Scarif archives, remember? We saved each other's lives back then." She sees his eyes narrow in an attempt to concentrate, but in the end he just shakes his head a fraction. Undaunted, she goes on: "You work for the Rebel Alliance. You'd been posing as an Imperial officer until they arrested you. I'm here to get you out."

"Who are you?"

It should not hurt as much as it does.

"Jyn Andor."

" _Jyn Andor_?"

She was about to tell him more when he repeated her name; and his confused, incredulous tone makes her irrationally angry.

"I'm your wife, damn it," she snaps, and her voice mingles with the chime announcing that they have reached their destination.

The corridor is empty and quiet. Before they step out, Cassian slings one of the rifles over his shoulder, and the moment he is clear of the lift doors, he aims the other one and shoots the three guards at the entrance checkpoint about thirty meters away with scary precision. Next he hands the second rifle to her; and they are sprinting past the checkpoint and out of the building, Jyn leading the way to where the concealed getaway swoops are waiting, when she hears him finally answer her behind her back.

"Why didn't you say so before."

.

TBC

.


	17. getaway

The two swoop bikes are exactly where she left them, and a quick check of the secret markers she set up to show evidence of tampering tells her that no one has disturbed or sabotaged them. Her throat tightens when she realises they will only need one of these.

At least it means she can use the second one as a distraction.

She has no time to explain this to Cassian; the Palace guards will have been alerted to the commotion, and will be here any moment.

"Get in the back," she tells him, pointing to one of the bikes. Luckily, he does not argue.

She steps over to the other bike, starts the engine, cranks the throttle up to the max, and jams the blaster rifle between the accelerator and the windscreen, locking it in place. She leads the bike over to the edge of the parking platform and releases the clutch; the bike lunges forward, narrowly missing her in the process, and flies a couple of hundred meters into the air in a wide arc before crashing about a dozen levels below in a spectacular fireball.

She jumps into the driver's seat of the first bike and carefully manoeuvers it to the opposite side of the platform.

"Hold on," she calls to Cassian over her shoulder before diving down on minimum speed, the nauseous feeling in her stomach subsiding only when the swoop's trajectory stabilizes some twenty meters down. She can hear sirens in the distance, but from what she can pick up, they are going to the crash site of the other bike. It worked, then; their departure has been unnoticed.

She swerves into a side lane, goes down another half a dozen levels, and starts weaving her way through busy evening traffic towards the APZ border.

xxx

They stop in a dark, dingy side lane off a busy street, and she edges the bike into a narrow pedestrian passage. When a few minutes' wait finally convinces her that they are clear of pursuit, she tells Cassian to get off and wait for her, leads the bike further in, into the decrepit innards of a cheap eatery that must have gone out of business decades ago, and shoves it into the rusted freezer chamber before slamming the door shut.

So far, this is all part of the plan; she scouted out this place in the early hours of the morning, after leaving the two bikes, one by one, near the Palace and before going over to Nairi's apartment to meet Davin. The idea was that he would take one of the swoops to the safehouse she had taken him to the night before, where she had added his palm print to the trusted visitor register, and she and Cassian would take the other one to the APZ, change their ride to a third bike she left in a concealed spot nearby, and go to the main safehouse, from where they would contact Davin and agree on their arrangements for getting off Coruscant.

Now, with Cassian accompanying her, she has no one else to call on this planet.

"Let's go," she tells Cassian when she has re-emerged from the eatery ruin. They may be out of immediate danger, but it is a very fine line. He does not question her instructions, following her through a maze of walkways onto the other side of the block, and then two more levels down, to a set of locked swoop garages. She counts the third one from the right and puts her pal against the scratched scanner pad. The durasteel shutter slowly screeches its way up on the rusty tracks, and she is relieved to see that the bike is still there.

She thumbs up the antiquated light switch, and they walk inside. If Cassian is confused about what exactly is going on, he does not show it; apparently, her behaviour has inspired sufficient trust in him to make him go along with her actions. At this juncture, though, she suspects she will be testing it to the limit.

"I need the blaster rifle," she tells him. "I used mine to jam the other swoop."

Surprisingly, he takes it off his shoulder and hands it to her without a word. She reaches into the bike's storage compartment, retrieves the light blaster pistol she put there the day before, and hands it to him.

"Wait for me, OK? And try not to start a firefight."

"Where are you going?" He does not sound alarmed, but is clearly confused.

"To get you a change of clothes and something to put over this," she gestures at this uniform, "for now. I should be back in twenty minutes or so."

"How will I know it's you when you're back?"

"I'll lock the shutter and open it with the palm scanner."

"You sure someone else can't short-circuit it?"

"Well, if the worst comes to the worst, you'll see if it's me when I get in – " She stops abruptly, seeing his uneasy look. "What's the matter?"

"Thing is, I can't see very clearly. I see outlines well enough to shoot, but everyone's faces are all out of focus. And the sounds, the voices are all distorted. So I may not recognise you."

Belatedly, it dawns on her. "You're on drugs."

"I suppose so. I think so."

"Do you remember what they gave you?" The worst part is, he may be in need of urgent medical care, which they may not be able to get. And unless she knows what drugs he has in his system, she cannot do anything.

He shakes his head and immediately has to steady himself. It is amazing in retrospect that he was able to hold on during their swoop ride. "I don't even remember how it happened."

" _Sith_ ," she says under her breath. "OK, just stay here. Please."

xxx

The short, stocky Sullustan manning the used clothing store freezes when he sees her come in holding a blaster rifle, even if she is not pointing it at him, or anywhere in particular. It is unlikely that he will call Imperial security on her, but to make sure he does not call any informal enforcers he may know, she hurries to reassure him.

"I'm not here to rob you. I need some clothes for me and my boyfriend, and I don't have any credits." Which happens to be true; all she was carrying when Davin took her to the Palace was an Imperial ID… that, and two stun grenades that she used up in there. "So I wanted to ask you if you'd take this," she reaches toward him with her arm, holding the rifle by its strap, "by way of payment. It may have a location chip, so you'd better hurry to have it taken out," she adds, seeing how quickly his eyes light up. It won't help either of them if he is caught with a rifle last seen on an Imperial Palace stormtrooper.

"Of course, of course," he chitters excitedly. "I'll have my nephew working on it right away. You can take any clothes you like."

There is not a lot of choice, but in the end she settles on a long dark coat for Cassian to put on top of his uniform, a pair of dark goggles – he cannot see clearly anyway, so will be no help to her even without these - a simple light grey shirt and dark grey cargo pants for him to change into later, and a long patterned Chandri-La'n gown for herself – with her love of trousers and utilitarian outfits, it is about the last thing anyone who knew her would expect her to wear. In theory, she could have her pick of clothing from the stash at their apartment, both the things she bought and the things Shani left her; but it is not worth the risk, and there is nothing else of value at the apartment that would justify the excursion.

The Sullustan happily head-bobs his agreement when she shows him the pile, and waves a dainty hand at her when she leaves the store, convinced that he got the better end of the deal. It is objectively true, but unless things go disastrously wrong, the two of them should not be in need of weapons to make their escape off Coruscant; and if things _do_ go disastrously wrong, a single blaster rifle will not help them much anyway.

xxx

Luckily for both of them, Cassian does not try to shoot her when she shows up. She calls out to him softly as the shutter slides up, less noisily this time, and sees him relax when he hears her voice, no matter how distorted it may sound to him. She hands him the coat and goggles, and nods approvingly when she sees the result. He looks somewhat strange, but that is no rarity in this part of town; and most importantly, he does not look remotely Imperial.

She is about to tell him to get on the bike so they can go to their final destination when he calls out to her

"Jyn?"

"Yes?" She is glad he remembers her name now.

"I'm… sorry I threatened to shoot you back in the Palace. I had no idea who you were, really."

"It's OK. I almost shot you once, too," she adds for greater reassurance. Well, almost shot his speeder bike, at any rate. "When I mistook you for a policeman."

"On Scarif?" It is pretty obvious to her that he cannot remember, and is using a name he heard her mention.

"No, the place we went to after that, a planet called Dorvalla," she explains. She does not expect him to suddenly recall it, but hopes that in time, he might.

xxx

It is a short hop from the garage block to their main safehouse; or rather, to the top of the building whose foundations it is built into. Flying a swoop at this altitude is inherently risky given the higher winds and sudden gusts; but given the relative scarcity of traffic cameras this high up, it is a safer bet Empire-wise. As an added bonus, she discovered a disused maintenance shed on the roof that it took her all of half a minute to break into, and she has now driven their bike right up to it, and into it, so the two of them can avoid the official building garage that has more or less regular surveillance.

She takes a minute to survey their surroundings before going to the turbolift that is to take them down to within reach of the safehouse. Darkness has fallen, and the taller buildings around the rooftop they are on are aglow with pinpricks of golden light under the indigo sky. For once there is no sign of an approaching thunderstorm; it looks oddly peaceful, in contrast to the way their day has been going so far.

"Have I been here before?"

Cassian's question catches her in the middle of her reverie.

"You mean on this rooftop?" He could, of course, just as easily mean this planet.

"Yes."

"No, you've been with me to the lower level near the bottom, where our safehouse is. Where we're going now."

His response is a blank stare.

"It's all right. Maybe you'll remember it when we get there."

"It's _not_ all right," he argues, his voice quiet but convinced. "I can't think straight, it's all really hazy… I can't remember anything. Not even my name. Corran, you said?"

"Cassian." She wants to say that the drug effect is bound to wear off eventually, but realises that there is no way to be certain of that.

"Were you in the Palace because of me?"

"Yes. We got your former commanding officer to order you in for questioning so we could get you out."

"Who is _we_?"

That, of course, is something of a long story, and a sad one.

"I was there with a… friend."

It is clear from his concerned face that he noticed her hesitation, though she is not sure what he made of it.

"I heard you shouting for someone named Davin, was that him?"

"Yeah."

"Is he...?"

"He was killed back there."

He must have got the entirely wrong idea from her broken voice as she said it, because his next question is wildly off the mark.

"Did you love him?"

"No," she snaps, more harshly than she has any right to. "He was a friend. And you are an idiot," she cannot help adding under her breath, hoping that he does not catch the last part.

Of course he does. He says nothing, just looks down, but the wretchedness is unmistakable.

She is instantly ashamed of herself for being angry at a condition he has no control over. "I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry." She steps up to him and squeezes his arm by way of an apology. "Davin was the fiancé of a friend of mine… of ours. A girl named Nairi. She was killed yesterday." For now, she figures, it is best to keep the details to herself.

"Did I know her?"

"Yes."

"You said she was killed."

"Yes," she sighs.

His next question feels like a steel spike through her heart.

"Did I kill her?"

Her first impulse is to tell him that he cannot possibly think so badly of himself… but then she thinks back to his drugged state, and to the fact that he did not even recognise her, who he has known for four years. He only met Nair once before the fateful appointment at the APZ; and there is no telling what may have happened if he was already in the same state he is in now.

In the end, she thinks, she has to be honest with him.

"I don't think so, but I don't know."

xxx

Her first priority once they are in the safehouse is to power up the computer and put through an urgent message for Cracken. _We have accomplished the mission but encountered major difficulties..._ The tragic details can wait. _…and need an urgent update on our extraction plan. We must present ourselves as low-profile civilians and be seen as travelling on private business. Please advise._

Once the message is sent, she takes out a handful of rations bars from the storage cabinet for herself and Cassian to eat in lieu of dinner, and spends a few minutes scanning through the Holonet local news to make sure that their Palace altercation stayed under the radar as far as the general public is concerned, as she waits her turn to shower and change. She is pleased to see that the only news about the Imperial Palace are about a lavish reception in honour of the Kuat Drive Yards trade delegation. A mere two weeks ago she was one of that crowd, she figures with a wry smirk, flitting around a fancy venue in an elegant dress.

"What are we doing here… on Coruscant?"

Once again Cassian catches her by surprise; not least because when she turns away from the screen to look at him, he looks different once again; wearing civilian clothes and with his hair wet from the shower, he looks almost the same he does on their days off on the Home One, and nothing like he did for the past month.

"We're undercover agents," she explains. "We came here to gather information, and to set up a way to transmit it back to the Alliance. We've done that now, so I was just writing to my commanding officer asking him to find us an exit option out of here. Want some?" She points to the rations bars.

"Thanks. I guess I might as well. Listen…" She can tell he is reluctant to ask the question. "When you said you were my wife, did you mean it as the cover story, or… are we really married?"

"It's both. We really are married, and we were posing as a married couple here."

There is no mistaking the way his face lights up at hearing it. "Good!..." Then, just as she smiles in return, he quickly backtracks. "…though I can't imagine what you think of being married to me now," he adds, quickly and rather gloomily.

She can think of nothing better to say than his own words from two days ago.

"It's the best thing that's ever happened to me." She turns to face him and takes his hand. "I swear."

xxx

She thought she might try to stay awake until she received Cracken's reply, hoping for quick turnaround for her message, but seeing how she stayed up the night before, she soon realises that her plan amounts to pure wishful thinking. Even Cassian, in his messed-up state, can see it.

"You're really tired. You should get some sleep."

"I know," she mutters as she scrunches up the wrappers from their makeshift dinner. "So should you, I'd say." In principle it could be a good idea to give him a sedative, but she cannot do it not knowing what drugs he is on.

"I'm not sure I'll be able to, right now. My head's spinning too much."

"It won't get any better if you stay up," she prompts.

"I guess I can lie down and see what happens," he ventures with a wry grin, before continuing in a suddenly serious tone. "I think you'd better put these on me, though, just in case."

She is momentarily confused until she looks at what he was pointing at – the pair of rigged handcuffs that she had clasped to her belt when she took them off in the Palace, now lying discarded on the desk.

"I wouldn't trust myself right now," he adds, by way of explanation.

"Nonsense." She makes no move to pick up the cuffs. Besides, these are rigged," she adds, more for his benefit than by way of a real argument. "We, Davin and I, tweaked the lock so they open when the catch is released."

"It can be fixed," Cassian suggests, still unconvinced.

"Nonsense," she says again, as she opens the door to the second room and sits down on the lower bunk bed. "Come here, it's an order." Good thing he does not remember he outranks her.

He sits down on the edge of the bunk, way too far away for her liking, and she ends up pulling him to her as she leans back on the stacked pillows so his head rests on her chest. And she strokes his shoulders until he drifts off, which takes much less time than either of them probably expected; and when he is asleep she sits there looking at him in the dimly lit room, running her fingers through his hair and occasionally kissing the corner of his eye. Her last conscious thought before she, too, dozes off is that no matter how bad his state may be and no matter how long it might take to get him out of it – _if ever_ – she is going to stick through it with him.

.

 _to be concluded_

.

 _Corran_ is a reference to Corran Horn, the central PoV character in the X-Wing series (or one of the central ones)


	18. freedom

Her hands are aching with the strain, and she has to fight stomach-churning dizziness whenever she looks down. They are clinging to the side of the central repository column inside the Scarif archive tower, and she must climb further up to reach the Stardust file, but it seems that the harder she struggles to reach up, the less strength she has left. Cassian is next to her, and she thinks that maybe if she cannot reach it, _he_ will – and then she sees Krennic stride into the control room no more than ten meters away across the chasm, readying his blaster, and watches the bolt hit Cassian's arm; and he loses his grip and falls… and just keeps falling, until she can no longer see him in the dark shaft; and she wants to scream but her voice dies in her throat.

She wakes up with a shudder, and while she knows that this was just a nightmare, her breath is still shaky; but what instantly helps soothe her tattered peace of mind is when Cassian, still asleep but disturbed by her thrashing around in the narrow bunk, reaches over and puts an arm around her, as he has done countless times.

And she knows that everything will be all right.

xxx

When she wakes up again, she is initially confused as to how it happened that she fell asleep holding Cassian, and now finds herself in his arms; until she remembers the nightmare. She is still drowsy, and takes some time remembering where they are and how they ended up here; at first glance, the room they are in looks unfamiliar in the low light. The fact that she is in a bunk with Cassian next to her could mean that they are on their way back to the _Home One,_ but that would be too easy; her last memories are of fleeing across Coruscant's dingy underbelly, and there is no way they have made it offplanet in the meantime without her remembering it. And they are not in their Coruscant apartment either; they had a bed rather than a bunk. Then she finally recalls the previous day's events, and the pieces fall into place.

A couple of minutes later Cassian stirs awake and opens his eyes. When he looks at her, his expression is markedly different from the previous evening, concerned rather than confused.

"Where are we?"

"Coruscant", she answers mechanically. He may _look_ alert, but apparently she still has a lot of explaining and reminding to do. Oh well, whatever it takes.

But when he asks his next question, his voice is brisk and almost impatient. "Jyn, I _know_ we're on Coruscant; I mean what the blazes is this room?"

Her eyes fly wide open. "You remember the safehouse?"

"Sure." He sounds almost offended.

She cannot hide her sigh of relief. "We're in the second room. The one with the data station is next door."

"Wait, how did we…" He cuts himself short and runs a hand down his forehead, over his eyes. "Oh _sith_ …"

"What?"

"I think I know the answer."

"How much do you remember?"

He sits up and stays like that for a few seconds, eyes closed, before looking at her again. "Most of it, I think… except that the past day or two, after they arrested me, are a blur. I have a general idea of what happened after they brought me back to the Palace, but only just. Do you know how much time has passed since they caught me?"

She reaches down for the datapad she left by the side of the bunk, together with a flask of water, and checks the time; almost midday. "About forty hours. Forty-two and a half, to be exact."

"And what time did we get out of the Palace?"

"Eighteen hours ago, more or less."

"So I missed a standard day's worth of memories."

"Considering that you spent that day in prison, it may be a good thing. How are you feeling?"

"Like I have a really bad hangover. My head's spinning and my eyes hurt and I am thirsty as hell. But one thing's for sure, I'm a lot better now than yesterday."

She reaches over for the water flask and hands it to him. "How do you know what a bad hangover feels like when you hardly ever get drunk?"

He takes a long sip. "Well, the few times I _did_ , the next day it felt exactly like this."

"Can you remember now what drugs you were given?" It looks like the worst of the effects have worn off, but if there is anything that can make him feel better still, she wants to know what antidote to look for.

"Lotiramine."

This makes no sense. " _Lotiramine?_ That's a Falleen stimulant, a black market commodity. I had no idea the Empire used it on prisoners. You sure...?"

"It wasn't them. It was me."

She gapes at the calm revelation. " _You gave yourself lotiramine?_ "

He nods. "I took a double dose."

" _Why?!_ "

"I needed a reason… for the Empire's benefit, I needed – not an alibi, but an alternative crime, if you wish. When Nairi and I were walking away from _The Quarren Dive_ , she saw that we'd been caught on a traffic cam and told me. And I knew there'd be questions as to why I had to ask for an hour off to dash into the APZ. I could say I'd run into Nairi by accident, but there had to be a reason why I was there in the first place. And the only thing I could think of that would not make them suspect me as a Rebel agent was that I was buying drugs for an urgent hit."

She has to steady her voice for the next question. "Do you remember what happened to Nairi?"

She can tell his answer before he speaks, from the way his shoulders sag and his face falls. "Yeah. I was there too late to do anything about it, but she told me. She'd run into a Black Sun enforcer on her way to _The Quarren Dive_ , after she'd parked her swoop. He saw her walking fast and keeping a hand on her pocket and thought she carried valuables, and he attacked her. What she was really guarding was the card, and she tried to fight him off so he wouldn't take it, and he stabbed her. She cried out, and someone saw it and started screaming, and the Black Sunner got spooked and got away." He closes his eyes and shakes his head. "She told me it was a flesh wound. She gave me the card and told me to get her out of there to this warehouse place nearby, she said she was going to call the emergency hotline from there. I offered to do it and she said no, she sent me away and said she'd call as soon as I was gone." He is staring straight ahead now. "I suppose she never made that call."

It is Jyn's turn to shake her head.

"I should have waited until she'd spoken to them. She must have stalled for time as long as she could to make sure I was as far away from there, and as close to the Palace as possible. Or else she had decided she wasn't going to call at all. I should have stayed."

"If it were me, I'd have sent you away too."

"If it were you, I'd have stayed no matter what. I should have stayed until Nairi had called." He looks crushed by the memory. "You know, a couple of days before I met you, when we were already looking for the Empire's superweapon, before we'd found out what it was, I was meeting an informant at a station called the Ring of Kafrene, and when he got wounded, and it became clear he couldn't escape with me, I shot him. Just killed him, like that. Back then, all I thought about was the mission priority of getting data to the Alliance, and I hardly knew the guy, but I haven't been able to forget him since. Tivik, I still remember the name. And now I've done it again."

Jyn shifts in the bunk until she is fully facing Cassian, staring straight at him. "This was completely different."

He looks down, avoiding her stare. "I should have stayed."

"And then we'd never have erased the database, and Nairi would have died for nothing."

"She might have lived."

Jyn sighs. "Maybe… but we'll never know. All we know now is that it worked. You said it yourself in the message you sent me. If you'd come back a few minutes later, they might have arrested you coming in."

He thinks it over, then looks up, though he still avoids Jyn's eyes. "They probably would have. I had between ten or fifteen minutes from the time I came back in and until I overheard the order for my arrest. It was enough for me to get into Drysso's office and get the virus running, but just about. I'd been back in my own office for less than five minutes when I heard Merkon tell his aide-de-camp in the anteroom to call for a stormtrooper squad, and snuck out just before they arrived, I was in the turbolift with the doors closing when I saw them getting out of another one. I knew I couldn't leave the Palace after that, Merkon or the aide would have alerted the checkpoints, so I went to the only place I knew in the Palace from where I could send an untraceable message."

"The visitor centre."

"Yep. I still had the lotiramine with me, so as soon as I'd sent you the holo I got out the injector and gave myself the hit. By the time they found me I was so out of it that I didn't know what charge they were arresting me on. I thought Nairi was wounded but alive, so I figured it was an assault charge, by then aggravated by drug use."

It makes sense… well, _almost_ , except for one glaring inconsistency. _Two_ glaring inconsistencies.

"Why did you have to inject it? Possession would have been a less serious charge. And why the blazes did you pick lotiramine? Carsunum would have been just as easy to get and it's not nearly as powerful."

"Ever heard of skirtopanol?"

She is thrown by the non-sequitur. "No. Should I have?"

"Not unless you were interrogated by Imperials. It's a truth agent, and a damned effective one when used on humans. I took it once, a controlled dose, before I went to Carida, we wanted to see what my reaction would be. There's a small percentage of humans who have a higher level of resistance to it, but with most people, it just makes them blabber. I was somewhere halfway, I did my best to tell as many lies as I could but they told me afterwards I'd still let slip I was working for the Alliance."

"What does it have to do with lotiramine?"

"They have a strong interaction. Usually it's fatal, so they…"

She does not let him finish. "You knew about this when you took it – "

"Of course I knew – "

" _Cassian!_ " She is practically shouting.

"Listen, I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to get killed. Well, not necessarily. I figured that since they'd find the injector in my hand, they'd know very soon what it was I'd taken, and would decide to wait until the effect wore off before administering the skirto. And it would gain me a couple of days to try and escape. And more importantly, I thought it would guarantee that the ImPAIR was completely overwritten before they could get any information from me, and it would gain _you_ a couple of days to get off Coruscant."

She is far from placated. His reasoning is patchy at best; he would have had a better chance of escape un-drugged, and Nairi said more than once that the virus only took a few hours, and was unstoppable. So giving her time to escape was likely the primary reason; and a completely wrong one. "I told you I wasn't leaving without you. Would _you_ leave without _me_?"

He starts to protest but she does not need to hear his answer; she remembers him at the top of the Scarif archive tower.

"So you decided to fry your brain with an overdose on the off chance I'd do something I'd repeatedly said I'd never do?"

Apparently, he has decided to go on the offensive. "Fried or not, I'm almost back to normal now. At least I thought it would give you a better chance to go into hiding until things quieted down. Instead you decided to risk your life to walk right into the Imperial Palace. You told me yourself, Nairi's fiancé got killed in there. It could have been you."

The memory of their accidental standoff on Dorvalla springs up in her mind. "As you said once after I'd nearly shot you, I'd do it again. As many times as it takes."

She cannot help grinning as she says it; and sure enough, he picks up on it.

"Why are you smiling?"

"I spent two very long days waiting for a chance to say it." _Very_ painful _days._

It is his turn to grin. "You got me out just to tell me this?"

"That, and a few other things." By now they are both smiling.

"Well, I'm here now. What is it – "

He has no chance to finish the question, as she pulls him close and starts kissing him.

She is certain she took no Falleen stimulants or other mind-altering substances; and yet her impression of the next few hours is at once frenzied and dreamlike, as they drag the mattresses off both bunks and a jumbled pile of bedding down to the floor and keep up the frantic kissing as their hands roam each other's bodies. For this delightful, delirious interval, she forgets about the world outside the safehouse; all that matters is that she is, once again, with the man she loves; holding on to him, taking him in, giving in to the delicious sensation of being completely open to someone who gets the greatest, most sublime pleasure by giving _her_ the maximum amount of pleasure in the greatest variety of ways, who intimately knows her body and never fails to notice the slightest variation in her reaction, and who lights her up like a solar storm simply by looking at her with those unfathomably beautiful eyes, let alone touching her as gently as he does. Who has her begging to be taken simply by trailing his fingertips down her exposed body from neck to hipbones, not that he is in any hurry to humour her pleas. Who never fails to reduce her to a state of incoherent bliss when she thinks she will never be able to move, or speak, will just stay there transfixed by the pleasure overload; all she can do is cling to him as his arms cradle her, and try to recover her breath, and wonder if, with the way they are looking at each other and the way he keeps kissing her afterwards, they are likely to stop anytime soon.

They should be getting out, but it can wait, they have completed their mission, and they _need_ to be together just to prove they are alive; and they do not stop until they are completely exhausted.

xxx

 _several hours later_

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"Why are you looking at me like this?"

He knows the answer, of course; and if he wants to hear the reason, she is happy to oblige. And if he does not like it, well, he was literally asking for it.

"Because I'm travelling with a teenager."

A moment later, he catches her drift, and prefaces his answer with a rather impressive eyeroll. "What would you have me do to make myself less recognisable? This," he points to his upper lip where the moustache was until half an hour ago, "was the easiest and most effective way."

"Cannot argue the _effective_ part, that's for sure," she admits. "You look half your age."

"Nonsense. I certainly don't look _anything_ like a teenager."

She pretends to study his face. "Well… you _might_ be right. You look… about… twenty."

He tries not to laugh. "At any rate, I'm cheating on my wife with a mystery blonde."

" _This,_ " she parries, pointing to her platinum wig, "is easy to take off."

"And _this,_ " he counters, pointing to the missing moustache, "is easy to grow back. Just give me a couple of weeks."

Hopefully, they will live long enough for her to see if Cassian's assessment of the time it would take him to return to his usual appearance was correct. As it is, it is still an uncertainty. They are riding a turbolift up to the top level of the high-rise towering above the rarely-visited floors the safehouse is built into, toward where their swoop is hidden in the maintenance space on the roof. They received their getaway instructions in Cracken's answering message, short and to the point, but beginning with _Congratulations_ : they are to use their civilian fake-name IDs, which they have just finished by adding images corresponding to their current appearance, to board a civilian transport at Imperial City East spaceport, bound for the obscure world of Tatooine via Onderon, and are to meet K at Mos Eisley spaceport, where he will bring the ship they'd flown to Berchest two months previously.

They are about halfway up the building by now; strangely, no one has joined them for the ride, but Jyn is certainly not complaining about the lack of company; she has all the company she wants.

However, her preferred company is now eyeing her in a rather, well, persistent manner.

"What?"

"I just remembered something… back on Scarif, when we were riding down… remember?"

"Sure." Of course she remembers; their ride down in the slow, screechy, dimly-lit cargo elevator outside the archive tower, toward danger and possible death. She can only hope that this ride brings them to a less fraught destination.

Cassian must be thinking along very different lines from her, because he is grinning. "All the way down I kept thinking about how much I'd like to kiss you."

"Why didn't you?" She remembers only too well how much she wanted to do the same.

"I thought you'd slap me."

"Guess what, the only reason I didn't do it was, I thought you'd think me a sentimental featherbrain."

"Really?" His look has changed from amused to suggestive.

"Really." She steps right up to him, so he only has to incline his head to kiss her. Clean-shaven or not, he is still a damn good kisser; and they are so carried away that they do not notice it when the turbolift arrives at the top floor, and are startled by the chime.

At least when the doors open, there is no fireball to greet them.

…or maybe there is.

But rather than the deadly glowing fireball of the nuclear explosion, they are staring out the lobby viewport at a succession of delicate spheres made up of innumerable sparkling lights, blossoming across the Coruscant skies.

 _Fireworks._

There was nothing in their mission brief, or in the Holonet news she saw the night before, about an upcoming holiday or celebration. Did they miss something?

As soon as they exit the lobby to take a side passage toward the stairs going up to the roof, they find themselves in the middle of a milling crowd; dozens of beings, mostly humans but with a fair sprinkling of others, running in different directions, but all, apparently, with a sense of purpose and an unmistakable urgency.

"What's going on?" Her question is addressed to a Rodian hurrying by, who seems to be less preoccupied than the humans; he seems almost, strange as it might seem, in high spirits.

"You haven't heard, eh?" His Basic is accented with typical Rodian guttural inflections, but understandable. "The Emperor's dead." Encouraged by Jyn's excited gasp, he goes on. "Killed in an explosion on some kind of superweapon battle station. I heard someone call it the dead star."

"Death Star," she corrects mechanically.

"Yeah, like I said, dead star."

"Thank you," she exhales.

The guy will never know how much this particular couple of humans had to do with the news he has just shared.

She remembers the date now; 7861 Imperial. So much happened recently that she lost count.

The Alliance was able to find the location of the second Death Star, and use their intel to maximum effect. And the brave residents who set off the fireworks will likely avoid Imperial persecution without the ImPAIR database to guide the enforcers.

And they, and almost two million others, have no idea that they owe their lives to a weather scientist who decided to take on an Empire.

But while Nairi and Davin will not see this evening, the glorious harbinger of the end of the Empire, and the beginning of the New Republic so many have fought so hard for, Jyn and Cassian will tell their story to their friends at the Alliance and will make sure that their lives, and their sacrifice, will not be forgotten. Thanks to them and countless others, living and fallen, what started as a tiny spark of crazy impossible hope years ago has by now become the bright light of freedom dawning across the galaxy.

They walk up the stairs onto the roof, sit down, and hold each other as they watch the spectacular display, lucky – happy – to be together, alive, and free.

.

 _fin_

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Notes

Black Sun, a criminal cartel run by the Falleen, a reptile-like race, originally showed up in _Shadows of the Empire_ but also made an appearance in the X-Wing series' _Wedge's Gamble_.

The use of skirtopanol as a truth serum and its potentially fatal interaction with lotiramine, which can be used to counteract it but has a high risk of amnesia or death if taken simultaneously, is an EU canon fact established in _The Bacta War_ (the final X-Wing book which ends with Isard killed, Lusankya destroyed, and Coruscant and Thyferra liberated). The standalone side effects of lotiramine, which I assumed to be similar to those of crystal meth, as well as its original use as a Falleen stimulant, are my invention for this plot.

Once again I chicken out of writing sex scenes; but I can offer visual references from Diego Luna's films, if you manage to track them down. The final-chapter scene in _Against the Odds_ looked to me very much like the sex-in-the-rain scene from _Solo Dios Sabe,_ _sans_ rain, and for the one here I pictured the scene in the middle of _Solo Quiero Caminar_ ; we never see beyond their shoulders, but their faces and hands say it all.

I honestly did not mean for Cassian to shave off the moustache until late in the plot tweaking process; but then I was tempted to riff off their discussion during the initial mission brief in chapter 2, and give Leia a chance to see his "teenager" clean-shaven version. At any rate, as Cassian says, it only takes a couple of weeks to grow back :)

The fireworks on Coruscant are those seen at the end of the special-edition _Return of the Jedi_. I am no big fan of the special editions (Han shot first!), but I did not mind those celebration scenes; they broadened the canvas beyond the mildly claustrophobic, Ewok-infested original finale. Then again, I could see the point of those who said that anyone who set off fireworks on Coruscant to celebrate the Emperor's death would be promptly arrested and/or executed; and my ImPAIR database subplot, as in, their corruption of its contents, dealt with this glitch. And the way I figured Cassian's intel re: the Emperor's travels fit in with the famous Bothan intel re the Death Star mentioned by Mon Mothma before the Batle of Endor was that Cassian found out about the existence of the project and the _dates_ of the Emperor's visit while the Bothans, in the intervening two weeks, found out its exact _location_.

And by way of the last bit of headcanon, I thought that this mission would earn Jyn a promotion to Major. Cassian does not have much higher to go – I cannot see him as a General – but I figured they both got two weeks' leave and used it to go to a couple of the nice places they'd been planning to visit.

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For a final background reference, other than a heartfelt entreaty to read Michael Stackpole's X-Wing series ( _Rogue Squadron_ ; _Wedge's Gamble_ ; _The Krytos Trap_ ; and _The Bacta War_ )… and Timothy Zahn's brilliant Thrawn trilogy if you have not read it ( _Heir to the Empire_ , _Dark Force Rising_ , and _The Last Command_ ), I am putting up an approximate story timeline.

Basically, it takes place over the 2.5 months leading up to the Battle of Endor. They get their mission brief ten weeks before it, arrive on Coruscant eight weeks before it, and leave Coruscant at the end of the day the battle was fought on. At this rate I might have called it the proverbial _9 ½ weeks_ :P

ch 1/prologue: Battle of Yavin to 2.5 months before the Battle of Endor (the plot starts at "day 0")

ch 2-3: day 1

ch 4 weeks 1 to 2 (they visit Dorvalla on days 3-4, stay on Berchest for a week from day 5 to day 12);

ch 5: weeks 3 to 4 (Jyn and Cassian settle down on Coruscant);

ch 6: week 4 (Jyn meets Nairi);

ch 7: weeks 5 to 7 (Jyn and Nairi write code and look for dead drops while they wait for Nawara);

ch 8: weeks 7 to 8 (Nawara's visit);

ch 9: week 8 (mid-week) (Shani shows up);

ch 11: week 8 (2nd half) to 10 (they work on breaking the ImPAIR);

ch 12: week 10 (beginning) (Nairi is killed and Cassian is arrested)

ch 13-18: week 10 (beginning to mid-week) (Jyn and Davin get Cassian out, Jyn and Cassian escape)

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As I mentioned about 10.000 times, in my tunnel-visioned mind there is no such thing as _The Force Awakens_ or _The Last Jedi_. So in my stubborn headcanon I see this plot leading, two years later, to the conquest of Coruscant with the Rogue Squadron's help (where Jyn and Cassian would surely play a major role as strategists / intel sources); and four years later to Han and Leia's marriage that does not produce Kylo or go up in flames; and five years later to the Thrawn campaign. If you see Star Wars events differently after the end of this plot, it should not be my place to meddle, but we can agree that hopefully, Jyn and Cassian will be staying alive and having new adventures throughout it all :)

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Thank you for reading, commenting, and for the follow / favourite checks. It has been a fantastic journey from when I saw the film at a midnight screening in December 2016; and I am grateful to everyone who chose to come along. It makes my day to know that people enjoy these stories. I am sad to say goodbye to these two as a fic writer, but now that I am done with writing, I can _finally_ start reading about them :)

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